THE  WORLD  PEACE 
AND  AFTER 


By 

Carl  H.  Grabo 


New  York 

ALFRED  A.  KNOPF 
MCMXVIII 


COPYRIGHT,  1918,  BY 
ALFRED  A.  KNOPF,  INC. 


FEINTED   IN    THX    UNITED    STATES    OF    AMERICA 


CONTENTS 

Preface,  5 

Chapter  I  The  Opportunity  of  the  Peace,  13 

Chapter  II  International  Relations,  26 

Chapter  III  The  Citizen  and  the  State,  76 

Chapter  IV  The  New  Social  Morality,  117 

Chapter  V  Some  Practical  Considerations,  150 


PREFACE 

The  following  pages  were  written  in  large  part 
shortly  after  the  entrance  of  the  United  States  into 
the  world  war.  The  international  ideals  there  ex- 
pressed are  such  as  many  people  the  world  over  then 
held  and  have  since  come  to  hold  with  an  increasing 
ardour  of  conviction.  Only  subsequently  have  some 
of  these  become  specific  issues  of  international  diplo- 
macy. To  the  idealists  of  Russia,  to  the  British 
Labour  Party,  and  to  Woodrow  Wilson  do  we  owe  the 
insistence  upon  honourable,  frank,  and  enlightened 
dealing  among  nations,  no  less  than  among  individu- 
als, as  fundamental  to  a  just  and  lasting  peace. 

But  though  enlightened  and  magnanimous  ideals  of 
an  enduring  peace  are  now  a  part  of  the  world's 
thought,  a  theme  of  daily  discussion,  unfortunately 
they  are  far  from  being  universally  accepted ;  nor  are 
the  enemies  to  them  only  those  who  combat  them 
openly.  Infinitely  more  dangerous  is  the  secret  op- 
position to  them  of  a  powerful  class  both  at  home 
and  abroad.  For  these  ideals  are  indirectly  subver- 
sive of  the  old  order;  their  implications  are  revolu- 
tionary. As  I  seek  to  demonstrate  in  this  little  book, 
their  realization  demands  not  only  the  construction 

5 


PREFACE 


of  a  new  diplomatic  machinery;  it  demands  also  a 
social  revolution — peaceful,  perhaps,  but  radical — in 
each  of  our  modern  industrial  states. 

We  witness  now  the  initial  stages  of  that  revolution. 
The  world  war  has  long  since  ceased  to  be  only  a  war 
between  rival  groups  of  states;  it  is  a  conflict  of 
ideals.  It  has  become  a  war  of  classes ;  war  between 
the  rights  of  persons  and  the  rights  of  property.  The 
powerful  and  propertied  minorities  the  world  over 
are  being  drawn  together  in  a  contest  of  survival 
waged  with  the  masses,  which,  strong  in  numbers,  are 
weak  in  organization,  in  leaders,  in  the  tradition  of 
authority,  and  have  little  control  of  the  political  and 
industrial  machinery  which  has  hitherto  ruled  the 
world.  We  are  witness  to  the  incipient  stages  of  the 
last  and  greatest  revolution,  that  by  which  the  masses 
seek  to  wrest  power  from  the  bourgeoisie.  Other 
revolutions  in  history  have  exacted  power  from  kings 
and  placed  it  in  the  hands  of  the  nobility.  These  in 
turn  have  been  largely  merged  with  the  commercial 
classes,  and  political  and  social  power  has  shifted  to 
the  hands  of  those  who  control  the  wealth  of  the 
world.  The  revolution  whose  initial  tremors  we  now 
discern  but  which  may  not  be  completed  in  our  time 
is  that  which  seeks  to  effect  a  still  wider  distribution 
of  power:  to  place  it  truly  where  before  it  has  been 
but  ostensibly,  in  the  hands  of  the  people. 

Predictions  are  doubtless  hazardous  at  this  time, 


PREFACE 


but  I  look  to  see  the  best  and  most  immediate  results 
of  the  revolution  in  England.  The  British  Labour 
Party  has  organized  itself  into  a  political  engine 
which  gives  promise  of  controlling  English  policy, 
foreign  and  domestic.  It  has  a  program  and  leaders. 
Its  policy  is  far-seeing  and  genuinely  revolutionary, 
but  its  methods  promise  to  be  bloodless  and  its  con- 
quests such  as  it  can  retain  and  solidify.  What  may 
occur  in  Russia  no  one  can  safely  predict.  It  seems 
improbable  that  the  old  regime  should  ever  be  re- 
stored. On  the  other  hand,  the  Bolsheviki  seem  to 
have  before  them  an  impossible  task  if  they  are  to 
organize  an  industrial  state  truly  controlled  by  the 
workers.  The  industrial  condition  in  Russia  has  not 
sufficiently  evolved  to  permit  such  control  as  yet;  the 
masses  are  too  ignorant;  the  leaders  too  few  and 
visionary  to  cope  with  the  immediate  and  tremendous 
economic  problems.  I  look  to  see  the  restoration  of 
political  power  in  Russia  to  the  hands  of  the  moderate 
evolutionary  Socialists,  whose  program  will  be  to 
develop  industrial  machinery  subject  to  state  control 
and  whose  ultimate  aim  will  be  the  complete  absorp- 
tion of  this  machinery  by  a  socialized  state  when  a 
better  educated  proletariat  shall  be  fitted  to  rule. 

France  and  the  United  States  seem  to  me  to  offer 
the  least  immediate  promise  of  wholesome  and  tangi- 
ble results.  France  is  a  nation  of  peasant  proprietors 
and  small  business  men.  The  French  Revolution  was 


8  PREFACE 


a  bourgeois  revolution  and  France  has  been  largely 
content  with  bourgeois  control.  The  spirit  of  nation- 
alism also  is  strong  in  France.  Her  silence  upon  the 
new  internationalist  ideals  has  been  ominous.  And 
we  of  this  country  have  not  found  ourselves,  do  not 
know  what  we  want,  do  not  clearly  realize  what  our 
true  condition  is.  The  warfare  of  capital  and  labour 
in  the  United  States  is  still  primitive.  Our  labour- 
ing classes  have  not  yet  become  a  political  party 
realizing  the  necessity  of  a  voice  in  national  legisla- 
tion. And  vast  numbers  of  our  middle  classes  have 
not  wakened  as  yet  to  their  true  condition,  nor  to 
their  prospects  in  a  society  in  which  capital  becomes 
daily  more  strongly  intrenched. 

In  England  one  finds  a  more  intelligent  class  con- 
sciousness than  in  the  United  States,  more  widespread 
thought  upon  political  and  social  problems,  so  that 
despite  hereditary  class  distinctions  and  other  relics 
of  an  aristocratic  past  England  bids  fair  to  achieve 
a  democracy  which  is  industrial  as  well  as  political 
long  before  we  in  the  United  States  have  awakened 
fully  to  our  true  condition  and  to  the  changes  needful 
to  alter  it. 

The  pinch  of  war  may,  however,  do  much.  The 
President  and  a  few  intelligent  leaders  have  already 
done  much  and  may  do  more.  And  it  is  certain  that 
the  next  few  years  will  greatly  accelerate  the  sluggish 
flow  of  our  political  and  social  thinking.  Though  in 


PREFACE 


many  respects  the  most  backward  of  the  civilized  peo- 
ples, our  entrance  into  the  world  war  and  our  conse- 
quent participation  in  world  thought  must  inevitably 
modify  our  insularity,  our  provinciality.  A  partici- 
pation in  a  world  league  for  the  maintenance  of  peace 
must  lead  us  to  consider  those  domestic  evils  whose 
destruction  is  essential  if  that  peace  is  to  be  insured. 
We  have,  then,  to  consider  the  nature  of  our  democ- 
racy and  those  obstacles  which  at  present  lie  in  the 
path  to  its  better  realization,  a  realization  prerequisite 
to  the  assumption  of  our  rightful  place  in  a  league  of 
enlightened  nations  seeking  to  establish  a  world  order 
more  righteous,  more  enduring,  more  auspicious  than 
this  earth  has  yet  seen. 


THE  WORLD  PEACE 
AND  AFTER 


THE    OPPORTUNITY   OF   THE    PEACE 

DURING  the  three  years  and  more  that  the  world 
war  has  already  persisted,  years  with  their  daily 
record  of  horror,  many  a  thoughtful  and  sensitive 
American  has  asked  himself,  Is  life  worth  living  in 
a  world  in  which  these  things  are  possible?  Pessi- 
mistic youth  asks  that  question  when  crossed  in  love, 
but  mature  men  and  women,  who  have  endured  pain 
and  sorrow,  usually  find  in  the  interest  and  promise 
of  life  a  justification  of  existence.  Yet  when  this 
ghoulish  thing,  like  some  abhorred  familiar  from  the 
savage  youth  of  the  world,  leaped  upon  us  from  the 
shadows,  we  wondered  whether  life  did  indeed  con- 
tain true  promise  or  whether  our  civilization  and  our 
moral  progress  were  only  a  sham.  For  we  should 
be  superficial  and  naive  were  we  to  wash  our  hands 
of  responsibility  and  lay  the  blame  of  this  war  solely 

13 


14        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

upon  the  Germans.  Rather  we  should  search  our 
hearts  and  cry  in  the  words  of  Christian  fleeing  the 
wrath  to  come,  "What  shall  I  do  to  be  saved?" 

"Salvation,"  however,  no  longer  means  to  us  of  to- 
day individual  redemption.     The  old  narrow  per- 
sonal morality  of  the  Puritans  has  become  a  social 
morality,  and  when  we  seek  "salvation"  we  seek  it  as 
a  people  craving  the  right  way  for  the  world  whereby 
social  injustice  and  national  rivalries  and  hatreds — 
and  the  wars  which  spring  from  these — may  be  done 
away  with  forever.     We  wish  to  see  our  duty  more 
clearly  than  before,  our  goal  as  American  citizens 
solicitous  for  our  righteousness  as  a  people.     And 
above  all  we  wish  to  see  our  obligations  in  the  sister- 
hood of  nations  so  that  we  may  aid  the  world  to  real- 
ize its  hope  of  international  unity.    Strangely  enough, 
that  hope  persists  today  despite  the  war;  it  is  even 
stronger  than  before,  for  what  was  once  only  an  as- 
piration and  a  dream  has  become  a  vital  and  immedi- 
ate necessity  if  civilization  is  to  endure.     Nor  is  this 
an  inauspicious  time  to  press  for  its  realization.     So 
great  a  change  in  the  world's  way  of  life  demands  for 
its   inception   intense   emotion.     This   the   war   has 
brought.     Mankind  has  been  fired  to  a  white  heat; 
all  our  institutions,  habits,  and  conventions  lie  plastic 
to  our  hand  and  we  can  refashion  them  in  whatsoever 
forms  it  is  our  will  to  make.     But  we  must  strike 
while  the  metal  is  yet  hot,  before  men  and  nations 


THE  OPPORTUNITY  OF  THE  PEACE  15 

have  hardened  into  the  old  moulds  of  custom  or  the 
chance  moulds  of  circumstance. 

After  the  great  fire  of  London  in  1666,  Sir  Christo- 
pher Wren  drew  up  plans  for  a  finer  city,  one  with 
wider  and  straighter  streets,  with  open  spaces  for  the 
admission  of  light  and  air,  a  nobler  and  fairer  place 
in  which  men  should  dwell.  But  while  he  was  en- 
deavouring to  secure  sanction  for  his  reforms  and  the 
necessary  means  and  legislation,  the  old  city  grew  up 
as  before,  with  its  crooked  and  narrow  streets  and  its 
crowded  noisome  tenements.  The  regenerating  fire 
was  of  no  profit,  for  the  seventeenth  century  English- 
men had  not  the  energy  and  wisdom  to  turn  their 
misfortune  to  good  uses.  The  old  evils  sprang  up 
again  like  mushrooms,  and  two  centuries  and  more 
were  to  elapse  before  the  slow  pressure  of  social 
forces  achieved  a  few  of  the  benefits — and  these  at 
great  cost — which  a  little  idealism,  energy,  and  fore- 
sight could  have  secured  at  a  blow  when  London  lay 
in  ashes. 

Much  of  our  civilization  both  material  and  institu- 
tional lies  in  ashes  today  as  the  result  of  the  great 
war.  The  choice  is  ours:  to  let  the  old  evils  with 
their  ensuing  certitudes  of  conflict  and  misery  grow 
up  as  before,  or  to  refashion  civilization  to  finer, 
more  ideal,  uses.  We  lack  neither  leaders  nor 
ideals.  Much  of  the  best  thought  of  the  world  has 
pointed  the  way  for  us.  The  danger  lies  in  delay. 


16        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

If  we  wait  until  the  old  habits  and  beliefs  bind  us 
again,  until  the  ardour  of  unselfishness  has  cooled, 
until  the  religious  emotions  stirred  by  bereavement 
have  become  torpid,  and  the  spirit  of  sacrifice  in  life 
and  goods  has  become  again  the  spirit  of  gain  and 
greed — then  we  must  thereafter  be  content  with  the 
slow  groping  progress  that  emerges  from  the  conflict 
of  narrow  and  blind  forces.  We  have  today  an  op- 
portunity such  as  no  one  of  us  will  ever  see  again. 
It  is  ours  to  seize  and  mould  the  destinies  of  nations 
so  that  war  will  be  forever  impossible;  and  so  to  re- 
fashion the  social  order  that  justice  and  beauty  may 
come  to  be  where  now  are  economic  slavery  and 
misery. 

Were  the  whole  of  the  civilized  world  to  turn  to 
the  task  of  reconstruction  with  the  ardour  and  cour- 
age which  has  animated  the  millions  who  have  laid 
down  their  lives  for  a  cause  they  thought  just,  our 
civilization  could  in  a  few  years  attain  that  place 
which  under  normal  conditions  it  might  not  attain  in 
a  century.  We  revere  the  young  men  who  die  so 
willingly  for  The  Cause.  But  what  that  Cause  is  and 
the  certainty  of  its  attainment  we  only  can  determine, 
we  who  survive,  we  who  do  not  risk  our  lives  in  the 
trenches.  To  us  is  given  the  greatest  opportunity 
in  history  to  regenerate  the  world,  for  we  have  ideals 
and  science  such  as  did  not  exist  at  the  peace  of  1815 
or  at  the  conclusion  of  any  world  war  comparable  to 


THE  OPPORTUNITY  OF  THE  PEACE  17 

this.  Should  we  refuse  the  opportunity,  and  by 
every  delay,  every  failure  to  take  thought,  every 
compromise  with  our  highest  ideals,  we  shall  refuse 
it,  the  strong  young  men  will  have  given  their  lives 
for  nothing.  War  in  itself  and  the  sacrifices  of  war 
are  an  unmixed  evil.  But  it  is  the  law  of  life  that 
out  of  evil  may  come  good,  out  of  death  life,  out  of  a 
warring  world  the  brotherhood  of  man — if  we  choose 
to  have  it  so. 

The  task  for  the  citizen  is  to  think  as  clearly  as  he 
can  and  to  feel  as  deeply  and  purely.  Emotion  in- 
deed is  there,  much  of  it  exalted  emotion,  for  I  believe 
the  desire  for  good  is  more  universal  in  the  world 
today  than  ever  before.  No  war  has  ever  involved 
so  great  a  part  of  mankind  as  this  and  in  none  com- 
parably great  has  there  been  so  much  unselfish  sac- 
rifice for  ideals,  however  mistaken  some  of  these  may 
be.  But  because  of  the  very  magnitude  of  the  con- 
flict and  the  diversity  of  aims  of  the  peoples  involved, 
because  of  the  very  complexity  of  the  political,  social, 
and  economic  problems  evoked,  we  are  bewildered  by 
the  magnitude  of  the  task  of  a  righteous  settlement. 
We  have  to  devise  a  world  in  which  war  shall  be  im- 
possible, a  question,  it  would  seem,  of  international 
relations  purely,  of  Hague  courts,  and  an  interna- 
tional police.  Yet  a  moment's  thought  makes  us 
aware  that  back  of  this  machinery  lie  economic  and 
social  questions  which  must  be  met,  and  back  of  these, 


18        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

religious  and  ethical  ideals.  The  reorganization  of 
the  world  for  the  destruction  of  war  demands  the 
reorganization  of  every  nation,  and  within  each  nation 
the  creation  of  finer  and  clearer  ideals,  individual  and 
social,  for  each  of  its  citizens. 

The  unity  of  the  modern  world  for  good  or  for  evil 
is  a  self-evident  fact.  This  is  not  a  war  of  unmixed 
good  clashing  with  unqualified  evil.  At  its  best,  most 
ideally  stated,  it  is  a  war  of  the  democratic  spirit 
upon  a  single  form  of  autocracy,  a  form  obvious  be- 
cause an  anachronism.  The  Prussian  military  state 
is  a  relic  of  the  eighteenth  century,  is  indeed  almost 
feudal  in  form  and  spirit.  But  commingled  with  its 
militarism  is  an  industrial  autocracy  no  worse  in  in- 
tent though  better  realized  in  execution  than  the  indus- 
trial autocracy  of  all  modern  highly  developed  states. 
A  potential  industrial  autocracy,  one  far  on  the  road 
to  complete  realization,  exists  in  England  and  in  the 
United  States.  With  us  it  is  not  so  evident  as  that 
of  Prussia,  its  carnage  and  its  possibilities  of  evil  not 
so  spectacular  as  those  of  Prussia's  armed  legions. 

In  all  states  and  in  all  times,  today  as  yesterday, 
the  conflict  of  the  few  and  the  many,  of  overlord  and 
serf,  of  those  who  have  and  those  who  lack,  of  autoc- 
racy and  democracy,  persists.  Out  of  this  conflict 
spring  wars  and  misery  and  the  ills  of  this  world. 
It  will  profit  us  little  to  crush  militarism  in  Germany 
if  we  fail  to  recognize  autocracy  in  England  and 


THE  OPPORTUNITY  OF  THE  PEACE  19 

America  and  do  not  seek  also  to  destroy  it.  In  Eng- 
land and  America,  it  is  only  fair  to  state,  the  oppos- 
ing force  of  democratic  idealism  is  still  strong,  is 
not  yet  subdued  to  any  remorseless  philosophy  of  the 
superman.  Many  of  those  who  practice  autocracy 
among  us  would  fail  to  recognize  and  would  disclaim 
it  were  it  dignified  as  a  political  philosophy.  "Busi- 
ness is  business"  is  a  charitable  creed  covering  divers 
evil  practices  the  theory  of  which  will  not  bear  the 
light  of  day.  The  warfare  of  capital  and  labour  is 
only  now  clearly  recognized  as  a  war  of  classes.  We 
justify  it  only  on  the  ground  of  immediate  necessity. 
We  do  not  admit  that  wealth  is  justified  in  all  the 
practices  it  may  see  fit  to  employ,  nor  that  in  the 
order  of  things  some  few  must  always  be  rich  and 
the  vast  majority  poor.  In  Germany  we  find  the  cal- 
lous assumption  that  the  majority  are  but  cannon  fod- 
der to  be  sacrificed  at  the  word  of  the  few.  The  open 
declaration  and  justification  of  this  philosophy  revolts 
us. 

The  danger  of  German  autocracy  lies  not  so  much 
in  its  avowed  philosophy,  which  serves  only  to  put 
other  nations  upon  their  guard  and  prompt  them  to  its 
destruction,  but  in  the  efficiency  which  it  has  dis- 
played, the  loyalty  which  it  commands,  and  the  ele- 
ments of  good  in  it  which  have  produced  that  loyalty. 
Its  heartlessness  has  been  in  part  compensated  for  by 
a  better  social  order.  The  enslaved  masses  have  en- 


20        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

joyed  benefits  in  many  respects  superior  to  those 
which  the  masses  in  England  and  America  have  en- 
joyed. Order,  efficiency,  education,  comparative 
comfort,  insurance  against  the  evils  of  injury,  sick- 
ness, and  old  age — all  these  have  contributed  to  the 
content  and  loyalty  of  the  German  people,  have  made 
them  blindly  obedient  and  loyal  to  the  commands  of 
their  superiors.  And  this  very  efficiency  and  loyalty 
constitute  the  menace  of  German  autocracy  to  the 
freedom  of  the  world.  The  rest  of  mankind  have 
found  autocracy  in  its  political  and  industrial  forms 
inefficient  and  productive  of  no  good  to  them.  They 
have  turned,  therefore,  to  democracy  as  their  one 
hope,  a  democracy  never  as  yet  wholly  successful 
because,  perhaps,  never  given  a  thorough  trial. 

Democracy,  a  truer  democracy,  industrial  as  well 
as  political,  seems  indeed  the  one  hope  of  the  world 
today.  Politically,  the  people  of  Western  Europe 
are  becoming  convinced,  as  Americans  long  ago  were 
convinced,  that  the  rule  of  kings  and  overlords  is  a 
failure.  They  have  largely  done  away  with  them. 
But  the  expected  gain  to  human  freedom  has  not  been 
fully  realized,  for  power  has  but  changed  its  form. 
In  America  autocracy  is  not  the  power  of  a  landed 
nobility  with  hereditary  privilege,  but  the  might  of 
wealth  exerting  an  insistent  though  often  hidden  pres- 
sure upon  our  political  institutions.  We  are  on  the 
way  to  the  establishment  of  a  power  as  great  and  as 


THE  OPPORTUNITY  OF  THE  PEACE  21 

dangerous  to  human  liberty  as  that  of  Prussian  mili- 
tarism. The  peace  which  we  seek,  international  and 
permanent  peace,  will  never  be  achieved  until  the 
power  of  wealth  in  the  hands  of  industrial  exploiters 
here  and  in  England  is  democratized,  passing  from 
the  hands  of  the  few  into  the  control  of  the  many. 

We  have  also  to  confront  the  task,  until  now  never 
clearly  or  widely  realized,  of  making  democratic  con- 
trol of  industry  as  efficient  and  as  f  arsighted  as  auto- 
cratic government  in  its  most  successful  instances  has 
shown  itself  to  be.  It  is  a  provocative  fact  that  the 
relatively  free  and  democratic  powers,  England, 
France,  and  the  United  States,  have  been  able  to  meet 
the  lesser  might  of  the  central  empires  upon  some- 
thing like  equal  terms  only  as  they  have  adopted  the 
methods  of  the  enemy.  In  England  and  France  vir- 
tual dictatorships  have  been  established,  that  in  Eng- 
land a  coalition  of  the  reactionary  forces  of  the 
Empire.  Popular  control  of  government,  such  as  it 
was,  has  been  suspended  in  order  that  the  war  may 
be  fought  to  a  successful  conclusion. 

What,  upon  the  establishment  of  peace,  will  be 
the  domestic  consequences  of  the  centralization  of 
power  during  war  in  each  of  the  three  great  free 
peoples?  Three  possibilities  suggest  themselves: 

(1)  England,  France,  and  the  United  States  may 
return  to  the  conditions  which  existed  previous  to  the 
war,  those  of  industrial  competition  only  slightly 


22        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

regulated  by  the  state.  The  old  laissez  faire  system, 
inefficient,  wasteful,  and  unstable,  may  be  re-estab- 
lished. But  should  this  be  the  case  we  should  have 
soon  to  face  the  likelihood  of  another  conflict  between 
the  relatively  unorganized  and  inefficient  states  and 
some  power  or  group  of  powers  autocratically  direct- 
ing the  might  of  industry  to  the  attainment  of  national 
ambitions — Germany's  attempt,  all  but  successful,  in 
the  present  war.  In  such  a  conflict,  if  the  opposing 
forces  of  autocracy  are  anything  like  the  equal  of 
those  of  democracy  in  wealth  of  men  and  natural 
resources,  there  can  be  but  one  conclusion.  In  the 
present  war,  the  central  empires  with  far  fewer  men 
and  far  poorer  resources  than  those  of  the  Allies, 
have  by  virtue  of  better  industrial  organization  all 
but  overpowered  the  world.  In  the  light  of  the  sac- 
rifices which  this  war  has  exacted  we  dare  not  look 
forward  to  a  repetition  of  the  struggle. 

(2)  The  second,  the  more  likely,  and  by  far  the 
more  dangerous  possibility  is  that  the  democratic 
nations,  having  learned  from  the  enemy  the  manifest 
advantage  to  industrial  organization  of  autocratic 
control,  may  re-establish  their  governments  after  the 
peace  upon  a  highly  centralized  basis  not  subject  to 
the  popular  will.  There  will  be  a  strong  movement 
to  this  end.  Industrial  leaders  in  England  and 
America,  realizing  the  advantages  of  a  strong  central 
organization  which  shall  fuse  political  and  industrial 


THE  OPPORTUNITY  OF  THE  PEACE  23 

power,  will  seek  to  retain  it,  but  subject  to  their  con- 
trol, not  to  that  of  the  people.  The  economic  advan- 
tages of  such  a  centralization  have  been  demon- 
strated. It  makes  for  the  elimination  of  waste  and 
for  swift  and  precise  action.  It  offers,  too,  as  in 
Germany,  advantages  to  the  worker  in  improved 
working  and  living  conditions,  more  regular  em- 
ployment and  at  a  fixed  wage,  better  opportunity 
for  education,  a  greater  security.  It  offers  what 
Germany  has  given  her  people.  But  if  such  indus- 
trial and  efficient  states,  controlled  by  a  class  and  not 
by  the  mass,  should  be  established,  and  the  possibil- 
ity is  far  from  negligible,  the  war  of  democracy  will 
need  to  be  fought  again,  not  as  a  war  between  nations 
and  groups  of  nations  but  a  war  of  class  with  class 
the  world  over. 

(3)  A  third  possibility  and,  of  all,  the  most  diffi- 
cult of  attainment  is  that  upon  the  realization  of  which 
the  freedom  and  welfare  of  the  world  depend.  It  is 
the  reorganization  of  modern  states  in  such  wise  that 
industrial  efficiency  may  be  secured,  but  subject  to 
democratic  control:  it  requires  the  centralization  of 
political  and  economic  power  undominated  by  any 
class,  whether  a  bureaucracy,  as  in  Germany,  a  landed 
nobility,  as  in  England,  or  leaders  of  industry  and 
finance,  as  in  the  United  States.  Democracy  can 
survive  this  war  only  as  it  draws  strength  from  the 
forces  it  seeks  to  overcome,  learning  the  power  and 


24        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

efficiency  of  Germany  whilst  losing  nothing  of  the 
freedom  which  it  now  has  nor  the  power  of  attaining 
that  greater  freedom  to  which  it  aspires. 

In  the  large  impersonal  view  of  nature,  this  war 
may  seem  but  a  contest  for  survival  between  two  rival 
orders  of  life.  Germany  has  displayed  something 
of  that  organization,  efficiency,  and  subordination  of 
the  individual  to  the  purposes  of  the  group  which  we 
marvel  at  in  the  colonies  of  ants  and  bees.  The 
peoples  of  England  and  the  United  States,  like  the 
birds,  are  less  gregarious,  less  able  to  co-ordinate 
numbers  to  an  end  and  sacrifice  the  individual  to  a 
community  purpose.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  one 
only  of  the  rival  orders  can  survive  and  that  the  other 
must  perish.  Were  they  to  continue  side  by  side 
unmodified,  this  might  be  the  case.  They  are  not, 
however,  distinct  orders,  but  members  of  the  same 
species,  and  supposedly  high  enough  in  the  evolu- 
tionary scale  to  profit  by  experience  and  learn 
through  imitation.  Were  they  to  fuse  their  seem- 
ingly opposed  ideals  of  the  state,  a  society  might  be 
constructed  in  which  a  highly  centralized  power,  po- 
litical and  economic,  would  permit  the  utmost  prac- 
ticable degree  of  individual  freedom.  Such,  at  any 
rate,  difficult  as  its  attainment  is,  must  be  the  aim  of 
a  reorganized  world  upon  the  conclusion  of  peace. 
Democracy,  to  survive  as  a  working  ideal  and  as  a 
force  sufficiently  strong  to  combat  autocracy  whether 


THE  OPPORTUNITY  OF  THE  PEACE  25 

political  or  industrial,  must  profit  by  its  failures  in 
this  war.  Not  otherwise  can  the  danger  of  the  rise 
to  power  of  other  states  upon  the  German  plan  be 
discounted.  States  in  which  there  exists  no  strong 
democratic  ideal,  as  for  instance  Japan,  may  learn 
from  the  present  war  not  that  autocracy  is  dangerous 
to  the  liberties  of  men,  but  that  autocracy,  guiding  a 
highly  organized  industrial  system,  is  strong.  Such 
a  state  may  be  deterred  by  no  altruism,  no  passion 
for  individual  liberty,  from  the  attainment  of  its  im- 
perial ambitions.  Individual  freedom  and  the  in- 
creased power  of  the  state:  these  two,  however  seem- 
ingly opposed,  must  be  somehow  reconciled  one  to 
the  other.  We  must  solve  the  paradox  of  a  co-opera-i 
tive  society  which  yet  respects  individual  rights,  in 
which  the  individual  gives  himself  to  the  services  of 
the  state  but  retains  his  share  of  state  control  and 
receives  in  so  doing  a  greater  measure  of  freedom 
for  the  development  of  his  powers,  for  self-realiza- 
tion, than  he  now  possesses.  To  attempt  the  defini- 
tion of  such  freedom  is  the  purpose  of  this  discussion. 


II 

INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS 

WE  have  so  long  been  taught  to  think  of  the  world 
in  terms  of  states  that  it  is  only  with  a  conscious  and 
violent  effort  that  we  are  able  to  detach  ourselves 
from  the  glamour  of  patriotism,  from  the  glories  of 
emperors,  kings,  and  presidents,  from  the  rhapsodies 
of  literature  personifying  the  nation  as  a  young  and 
beautiful  woman,  and  to  look  upon  the  state  as  it 
really  is:  its  origin,  its  justification,  its  services,  and 
its  defects.  In  childhood  we  are  given  flags  and 
guns;  in  the  schools  we  learn  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers, 
of  George  Washington,  and  Lincoln;  and  in  maturity 
we  read  our  nation's  history  or  see  it  in  the  making. 
We  contrast  our  customs,  our  virtues,  our  women  with 
the  like  but  inferior  possessions  of  foreigners.  And 
throughout  all  this  educative  process  our  minds  are 
unconsciously  warped  to  an  artificial  conception  of 
the  state.  Our  country  is  personified  as  Uncle  Sam, 
a  benevolent  and  shrewd  old  gentleman  of  rustic 
quaintness;  or  as  Columbia,  a  deep-chested  starry- 
eyed  goddess  emblematic  of  liberty.  Our  conception 
is  a  figure  of  speech,  a  poetic  misrepresentation  of 

23 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  27 

reality;  and  we  are  so  constituted  that  it  is  all  but 
impossible  ever  to  see  this  reality  with  fresh  and  un- 
distorted  vision. 

Yet  the  state  is  purely  an  artificial  and  in  a 
sense  an  unreal  creation,  largely  the  product  of  for- 
tuitous circumstance.  It  is  merely  a  body  of  people 
occupying  a  certain  portion  of  the  earth's  surface 
which  has  more  or  less  sharply  defined  topographic 
barriers.  This  group  of  persons  has  a  certain  form 
of  government,  certain  laws,  traditions,  literature, 
and  speech  which  differentiate  them  from  neighbour- 
ing groups  on  the  other  side  of  a  river  or  sea  or 
separated  from  them  by  so  slight  a  barrier  as  a  row 
of  stone  posts  suitably  engraved  with  coats  of 
arms.  States  virtually  are  but  families  occupying 
adjacent  properties  which  are  visibly  demarked  by 
fences  and  hedges.  Like  families,  too,  races  have 
slightly  differing  customs,  differing  tastes  in  food 
and  dress,  and  differing  conceptions  of  the  duties  of 
children  to  their  elders.  But  the  likenesses  are 
far  more  remarkable  than  the  dissimilarities.  All 
are  composed  of  men  and  women  who  love  and 
aspire,  work  and  play,  beget  and  bear  children,  and 
in  due  time  die  and  are  buried  with  appropriate 
ceremonies.  Differences  even  of  race,  apparent  in 
the  hue  of  skin,  form  of  features,  and  colour  of  hair 
and  eyes,  are  superficial  only.  To  the  surgeon  lay- 
ing bare  the  nerves  and  muscles  of  the  body,  and  to 


28       THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

the  poet  laying  bare  the  dreams  and  aspirations  of 
the  soul,  men  are  alike  the  world  over.  The  maxims 
of  Confucius  resemble  the  teachings  of  Christ,  Balder 
is  but  another  name  for  Apollo,  and  the  cultured  man 
of  America  or  Russia  turns  to  the  plays  of  Sophocles 
or  the  aphorisms  of  Marcus  Aurelius  for  spiritual 
consolation  and  enlightenment. 

Why,  then,  are  barriers  erected  between  the  various 
members  of  the  human  family  and  the  hedges  separat- 
ing one  group  and  another  set  with  mantraps  and  pit- 
falls? The  answer  is  to  be  found,  of  course,  in 
the  history  of  the  human  race.  The  barriers  and  the 
consequent  hostility  and  hatred  are  inheritances  of 
savagery  and  barbarism.  The  human  race,  pastoral 
or  sea-going,  spreading  in  groups  over  the  surface  of 
the  earth,  marked  off  each  one  as  much  land  as  it 
could  defend  from  the  encroachment  of  others,  and 
within  the  boundaries  so  defined,  developed  laws  and 
institutions  peculiar  to  itself.  As  more  land,  access 
to  the  sea,  or  "a  place  in  the  sun"  seemed  desirable, 
a  group  warred  with  its  neighbours  and  seized  what 
it  could  or  was  driven  back  within  its  former  bound- 
aries. Much  of  human  history  is  no  more  than  the 
record  of  this  ebb  and  flow  of  groups,  their  con- 
quests and  failures.  It  is  a  record  of  shifting  fron- 
tiers and  the  consequent  though  minor  implications  of 
a  varying  culture,  religion,  and  law. 

So  conceived,  history  seems  little  more  than  the 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  29 

record  of  economic  necessity  or  greed.  And  such  it 
is  in  its  larger  outlines,  which,  however,  are  blurred 
by  numerous  secondary  considerations.  Man,  though 
the  victim  of  economic  circumstance  and  lusting 
after  the  goods  of  this  earth,  is  in  his  soul  a  theo- 
logian and  poet.  Wherever  he  may  be  forced  to 
dwell  he  will  evolve  his  notions  of  a  deity  and  devise 
a  ritual  for  worship,  frame  a  philosophy,  and  specu- 
late upon  the  meaning  of  life  and  the  movements  of 
the  stars.  And  his  thoughts  and  aspirations  he  will 
set  forth  in  his  poetry  and  his  art.  He  will  fashion 
a  code  of  laws  whereby  justice,  as  he  conceives  it, 
may  be  secured.  Gods  and  ceremonies,  poetry  and 
legal  codes  will,  among  peoples  of  somewhat  equal 
culture,  be  much  alike  in  substance,  however  various 
in  form  and  nonessentials.  The  purpose  of  religion 
amongst  all  peoples  is  to  know  God,  the  ideal  of  art 
is  to  express  the  wonder  and  poignancy  of  life,  and 
the  aim  of  law  and  political  institutions  to  secure  jus- 
tice and  a  peaceful  life.  These  purposes  are  common 
to  all  peoples,  and  differ  only  in  the  means  of  their 
attainment. 

Yet  to  realize  this  essential  unity  of  all  races  and 
peoples  is  not,  in  practice,  easy.  Barriers  of  lan- 
guage and  custom,  hostility  born  of  trivial  differences 
in  manners,  and  more  than  all  else  ignorance  of  his- 
tory and  comparative  religion  have  until  modern  times 
bred  intolerance  and  hatred.  Even  today,  among 


30        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

the  most  enlightened  peoples,  we  cannot  declare  reli- 
gious and  social  tolerance  to  be  universal.  But  the 
auto  da  fe  is  gone  and  the  pogrom,  too,  it  may  be,  is  a 
thing  of  the  past.  In  English  eyes  all  Frenchmen  are 
no  longer  immoral,  nor  in  French  eyes  all  Ameri- 
cans avaricious  money  getters  lacking  an  appreciation 
of  philosophy  and  art.  In  these  respects  the  world 
has  grown  less  provincial  of  late  and  we  can  look 
forward  hopefully  to  the  complete  eradication  of 
such  childish  prejudices  from  enlightened  peoples. 

But  these  barriers  between  peoples  are  superficial 
and  their  removal,  however  much  it  may  facilitate 
travel,  agreeable  intercourse,  and  the  interchange  of 
art,  literature,  and  ideas,  does  not  destroy  the  funda- 
mental cause  of  the  hostility  among  nations,  which  is 
economic.  Economic  pressure  and  the  thirst  for  con- 
quest have  made  the  frontiers  of  states  as  we  know 
them  today.  Economic  barriers  of  tariffs,  govern- 
ment subsidies,  and  export  duties  keep  alive  the  fic- 
tion that  races  and  nations  are  more  different  than 
alike.  And  the  belief  in  national  destiny,  the  right 
of  a  "superior"  race  to  control  the  destinies  of  one 
deemed  "inferior,"  and  the  trade  rivalries  of  com- 
peting economic  groups  among  nations,  are  still  po- 
tent for  future  alliances,  conquests,  and  wars,  unless 
at  this  opportune  moment  for  the  establishment  of  a 
world  order  insuring  peace,  the  root  source  of  inter- 
national hatreds  is  recognized  and  removed. 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  31 

§2 

The  liberation  of  the  small  oppressed  peoples — 
Belgium,  Servia,  and  Poland — is  now  one  of  the  de- 
clared objects  of  the  Allies  in  pursuing  the  war  to  a 
successful  conclusion.  Whatever  political  and  eco- 
nomic factors  determined  the  original  alignment  of 
nations,  however  much  England's  concern  for  the  in- 
dependence and  security  of  Servia  and  Belgium  was 
at  first  due  to  a  jealous  fear  of  German  aggrandize- 
ment, the  desire  that  the  little  peoples  may  hence- 
forth be  enabled  to  live  a  free  and  unmolested  exist- 
ence has  become,  during  the  process  of  the  war  itself, 
a  moving  popular  force.  This  will  be  of  weight  in 
determining  the  conditions  of  peace.  A  war  in  origin 
political  and  economic,  the  work  of  "secret  diplo- 
macy," has  become  clearer  and  more  idealistic  in 
purpose  as  those  who  have  offered  their  lives  in  the 
conflict  have  sought  a  worthy  reason  for  doing  so. 

The  cause  of  the  war  is  no  longer  The  Cause  in  the 
war.  The  conditions  of  peace  offered  the  vanquished 
by  the  victors  are  the  test  of  the  purity  of  motive 
attained  through  sacrifice  and  suffering.  A  recogni- 
tion of  this  fact  is  evident  in  the  English  concern  for 
the  right  settlement  of  the  Irish  question.  England, 
seeking  a  restored  Belgium  and  an  independent  Po- 
land, dares  suffer  no  longer  the  reproach  of  an  op- 
pressed Ireland.  Nor  need  we  suppose  that  the 


32        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

desire  to  avoid  the  reproach  of  hypocrisy  is  the  sole 
motive  for  England's  action.  A  devastated  Belgium 
has  served  to  quicken  the  consciences  of  all  civilized 
peoples,  bringing  them  to  a  realization  of  their  own 
sins  and  national  obligations. 

Yet  just  and  desirable  as  is  the  re-establishment  of 
autonomy  and  the  restoration  of  the  devastated  lands 
of  the  little  peoples,  the  victims  of  this  war,  it  re- 
mains to  be  seen  if  the  implications  of  the  act  are 
fully  recognized  by  an  England,  France,  and  Italy 
concluding  a  victorious  peace.  What  of  India,  what 
of  Austria  and  the  Trentino,  what  of  Alsace-Lorraine, 
and  what  of  the  German  colonies  in  Africa  and  the 
East?  Is  the  principle  to  be  laid  down  that  all  peo- 
ples, black  and  yellow  no  less  than  white,  are  ulti- 
mately, if  not  immediately,  to  be  left  free  to  realize 
their  destinies  without  interference  by  the  Powers? 
Is  England  to  say  to  India,  as  the  United  States  has 
said  to  the  Philippines,  "Once  you  have  learned  self- 
government  and  desire  it  we  will  withdraw  and  per- 
mit you  to  manage  your  own  affairs"?  England 
realizes  in  the  present  crisis  that  the  strength  of  the 
empire  lies  in  the  voluntary  association  of  her  self- 
governing  colonies.  Canada  and  Australia  re- 
sponded more  quickly  to  England's  need  than  did 
England  herself.  Will  England  accord  the  privilege 
of  association  in  the  empire  to  a  self-governing 
India,  or  even,  perhaps,  permit  India  to  enter  some 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  33 

separate  federation  of  Eastern  peoples  under  the 
hegemony  of  Japan?  If  England  refuses  to  declare 
for  the  principle  of  autonomy  for  all  her  subject  peo- 
ples, the  purity  of  her  idealism  in  a  war  for  human 
liberty,  for  democracy,  may  rightly  be  impugned. 

The  disposition  of  the  German  colonies  will  like- 
wise serve  to  determine  the  character  of  this  war.  If 
these  are  divided  among  the  Allies,  on  the  pretext, 
perhaps,  that  they  will  afford  part  compensation  for 
the  war  costs,  then  the  war  will  show  itself  to  be  what 
most  wars  in  the  past  have  been,  a  war  of  conquest. 
Idealism,  purity  of  motive,  are,  let  us  repeat,  proved 
to  the  world  only  by  the  nature  of  the  peace  terms 
imposed  upon  the  conquered.  Rhetoric  and  patriotic 
protestations  prove  nothing  in  themselves;  they  must 
be  verified  by  deeds.  Insofar  as  German  colonies  are 
genuinely  German,  democratic  fair  dealing  demands 
their  restoration  to  Germany.  Insofar  as  they  are 
conquests  of  weaker  peoples  they  should  be  restored 
to  their  original  owners  and  let  alone  or,  under  some 
form  of  international  guidance,  aided  along  the  path 
of  self-government  to  democracy.  Recent  declara- 
tions by  Mr.  Lloyd  George  and  President  Wilson 
promise  the  renunciation  of  colonial  conquests  made 
in  the  war.  The  British  Labor  Party  demands  that 
the  colonies  of  Equatorial  Africa,  English  as  well  as 
German,  be  brought  under  international  control.  In 
its  remarkable  program  English  Labor  disclaims  all 


34        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

thought  of  imperial  conquest  whether  by  force  of  arms 
or  by  trade.  But  thus  far  these  ideals  are  the  ex- 
pression of  a  minority  group.  It  is  far  from  certain 
that  were  the  Allies  victorious  in  the  near  future  such 
ideals  would  find  expression  in  the  peace  terms  im- 
posed upon  the  Central  Powers.  A  defeated  Ger- 
many we  must  hope  for  but  not  a  Germany  so  impo- 
tent that  the  military  dictators  in  England  and  France 
nor  the  faction  in  the  United  States  hostile  to  Presi- 
dent Wilson  can  realize  their  imperialistic  ends. 

More  formidable  than  the  threat  of  territorial  con- 
quests has  been  the  declared  purpose  of  the  Allies 
to  wage  economic  war  upon  the  Central  Powers  after 
the  military  peace.  The  Paris  agreement  has  worked 
infinite  harm,  has  done  more  than  any  other  cause 
perhaps  to  strengthen  the  power  of  German  resistance 
and  to  make  the  liberal  elements  of  Germany  and 
Austria  sceptical  of  the  sincerity  of  our  peace  offers. 
President  Wilson  has  disclaimed  any  adherence  to 
such  a  program;  the  British  Labor  Party  has  abjured 
it.  But  those  in  authority  in  England  and  France 
have  been  silent  or  evasive  for  the  most  part.  It  is 
apparent  that  the  exploiting  groups  in  those  countries 
still  have  hopes  of  depriving  Germany  of  her  former 
place  in  the  commerce  of  the  world  and  are  not  yet 
ready  to  readmit  Germany  and  Austria  on  equal  terms 
with  them  to  world  markets.  That  the  Dardanelles 
should  be  open  to  the  trade  of  all  nations  is  a  con- 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  35 

summation  to  be  wished.  But  German  and  Austrian 
access  to  the  Mediterranean  and  to  the  trade  routes 
of  Asia  Minor  is  equally  legitimate  and  imperative 
if  the  world  is  to  be  freed  from  the  menace  of  eco- 
nomic war,  the  inevitable  precursor  to  a  war  of  arms. 

A  mixture  of  idealism  and  selfishness,  of  demo- 
cratic sentiment  and  commercial  calculation,  is  evi- 
dent throughout  the  history  of  the  war:  in  its  obscure 
origins,  in  the  confused  purposes  manifest  in  the  dec- 
larations of  the  participants,  and  in  the  intimations  of 
the  peace  terms  to  be  demanded  by  the  victors.  The 
German  proposals,  save  insofar  as  they  express  a  jus- 
tifiable desire  for  national  security,  are  frankly  self- 
ish and  dangerous  and  need  not  concern  us.  But 
great  indeed  must  be  our  concern  lest  selfish  and  mis- 
taken motives  dominate  the  policy  of  the  Allies.  In- 
evitably, insofar  as  the  Allies  look  to  secure  national 
advantage  and  economic  domination  through  the 
peace  settlement,  this  peace  will  prove  not  the  final 
world  peace  for  which  men  hope  but  an  armistice 
only,  a  truce  between  rival  groups  of  exploiters.  The 
men  who  have  given  their  blood  so  freely  in  the  hope 
that  good  might  come  of  their  sacrifice  will  then  have 
died  in  vain. 

It  is  therefore  needful  to  consider  the  true  causes 
of  war,  the  essential  nature  of  autocracy,  the  char- 
acter of  democracy,  and  the  relation  of  these  to  a 
world  peace.  These  questions  must  be  seen  in  clear 


36        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

and  simple  outlines,  seen  in  the  large,  unconfused 
by  minor  and  perplexing  issues,  in  order  that  we 
may  perceive  the  path  which  mankind  must  follow  to 
freedom  and  happiness.  Insofar  as  we  have  power 
we  must  guide  the  world  into  the  true  path  at  the 
present  auspicious  moment.  We  cannot  believe  too 
intensely  that  this  is  a  crucial  point  in  human  history, 
a  moment  which  may  determine  the  welfare  of  the 
world  for  generations.  On  the  one  hand  lies  the 
dreary  prospect  of  endless  rivalries,  jealousies,  and 
oppressions  such  as  the  world  has  always  known, 
with  their  weight  of  misery  for  the  greater  part  of 
mankind.  And  on  the  other  lies  the  prospect  of  a 
fair  and  ordered  world  advancing  with  an  ever  clearer 
vision  along  the  path  of  freedom  and  beauty,  with 
science  and  art  and  noble  living  not  the  chance  acces- 
sories of  a  limited  class  but  the  whole  of  life  for 
everyone. 

§3 

The  desire  for  power,  the  might  of  empire,  the 
Alexanders,  the  Caesars,  and  Napoleons,  the  Clives, 
the  Bismarcks,  and  the  Rhodes's — these  are  the  forces 
and  the  names  which  colour  the  page  of  history  and 
thrill  us  as  we  read.  They  summon  to  mind  centu- 
rions with  their  wounds  all  to  the  front,  the  Old  Guard 
dying  at  Waterloo,  Sepoys  and  sieges,  diamonds  and 
gold  mines,  and  diplomatic  lying  and  intrigue  ele- 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  37 

vated  to  the  realm  of  art.  They  are  picturesque  and 
enthralling  and  it  is  easy  to  forget  their  true  signifi- 
cance, the  basis  upon  which  they  were  reared — the 
bodies  and  the  bones  of  men.  Power  and  empire  are 
economic.  The  legions  of  Caesar  were  paid  with  the 
tribute  of  kings  and  each  ounce  of  gold  represented 
the  toil  of  men  sweating  in  the  fields  and  the  mines 
or  braving  death  upon  the  sea.  The  Grand  Army 
sacked  Europe.  The  wealth  of  India  and  South 
Africa  was  wrung  from  the  bodies  of  yellow  and 
black  men.  The  price  of  Alsace-Lorraine  was  the 
blood  of  German  boys,  and  the  tribute  wrested  from 
France  was  paid  from  the  hoardings  of  peasants. 
This  is  the  background  of  world  dominion  and  the 
might  of  empire.  It  is  as  true  in  peace  as  in  war. 
World  power  is  wrung  from  the  factory  workers  in 
Manchester,  Essen,  and  Pittsburgh,  and  from  the 
negroes  of  the  Congo  and  the  Indians  in  the  upper 
reaches  of  the  Amazon.  Empire  is  based  on  the  ex- 
ploitation of  the  many  by  the  few,  and  none  of  the 
glories  of  war  or  the  triumphs  of  peace  should  blind 
us  to  that  fact.  All  world  powers  share  the  guilt, 
those  we  speak  of  as  autocratic  and  those  which  we 
call  democratic,  and  the  callousness  of  Prussian  mili- 
tarism and  schrecklichkeit  should  not  blind  us  to  the 
sins  that  are  ours. 

Though  "dollar  diplomacy"  is  the  true  diplomacy 
of  practical  statesmen  the  world  over,  there  are  inci- 


38        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

dental  and  contributing  currents  of  altruism  which 
mollify  national  aggression  and  selfishness.  Some 
years  ago  there  was  much  talk  of  the  "white  man's 
burden."  The  European  peoples  professed  their 
obligation  to  bring  light  and  justice  to  the  dark  cor- 
ners of  the  earth.  Missionaries  follow  the  flag,  and 
the  commercial  traveller  sells  cotton  goods  to  the  con- 
verts shamed  in  their  nudity  by  the  teachings  of  the 
Gospel.  It  is  easy  to  be  cynical  and  to  declare  all 
missionary  enterprise  a  sham,  a  device  to  secure  trade. 
So  the  Germans  believe  all  Englishmen  hypocrites 
professing  the  enlightened  destiny  of  England  and 
making  enlightenment  pay.  To  call  the  Englishman 
hypocritical  is  to  misunderstand  his  mixed  motives. 
He  desires  to  make  money  but  he  also  likes  to  see 
things  "decent,"  to  have  the  law  administered  with- 
out fear  or  corruption.  He  contrives  to  achieve  both 
aims,  though  the  desire  to  make  money  may  be  domi- 
nant. 

Were  commercialism,  however,  so  callous  and  so 
clear  sighted  as  to  civilize  only  to  exploit,  it  would  in 
its  establishment  of  courts  and  its  endowment  of 
schools  and  missions  defeat  its  own  purpose.  For 
though  a  subject  people,  in  its  development  from 
savagery  to  civilization,  may  for  a  time  provide  good 
markets,  the  moment  comes  when  the  exchange  of  a 
string  of  gold  nuggets  for  a  string  of  glass  beads 
ceases  to  be  possible.  And  with  the  establishment  of 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  39 

order  and  justice  and  the  growth  of  education  comes 
national  self -consciousness  and  a  desire  for  political 
and  economic  independence.  Japan  learned  early 
and  well  the  white  man's  mechanical  skill  and  now 
profits  commercially  from  him.  India,  too,  I  take  it, 
is  less  profitable  now  to  England  than  in  the  time 
of  Clive  and  must  grow  increasingly  self-sufficient. 
England  gives  more  in  administrative  efficiency  than 
once  and  for  what  she  imports  in  goods  must  pay  a 
fairer  price.  Thus  commercialism  in  part  defeats 
its  purpose  of  giving  as  little  as  it  can  for  as  much 
as  it  can  get,  for  men  are,  happily,  so  constituted 
that  with  the  left  hand  they  unconsciously  undo  some 
of  the  evils  committed  by  the  right. 

Yet  the  commercial  might  of  England  still  is  based 
upon  control  of  the  sea,  vast  foreign  markets,  and 
an  industrial  population  fortunately  situated  with 
respect  to  the  raw  materials  of  machine  industry,  coal 
and  iron.  Still  more  is  her  power  based  upon  vast 
accumulations  of  capital,  which  enable  her  to  invest 
abroad  and  do  on  a  smaller  scale  in  her  colonies  what 
she  has  done  at  home,  subjugate  the  consumer  to  the 
will  of  capital  and  exact  profits  from  the  toil  of 
coolie  and  factory  hand.  As  the  world  grows,  the 
profits  of  industrial  enterprise  become  less  the  tribute 
exacted  by  the  conqueror  from  subject  peoples  and 
more  the  toll  of  the  exploiting  class  exacting  its  gains 
indifferently  from  all  classes  the  world  over,  includ- 


40       THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

ing  the  working  and  consuming  classes  of  its  own 
people. 

Germany,  less  happily  situated  than  England  and 
with  inferior  resources  in  soil  and  mines,  entering  the 
race  for  colonies  too  late  to  acquire  many  of  commer- 
cial value,  has  been  able  through  technical  education 
and  the  efficiency  of  a  highly  centralized  and  auto- 
cratic control  of  all  the  forces  of  her  people,  to 
acquire  the  prestige  which  she  enjoyed  at  the  opening 
of  the  present  war.  Endowed  by  nature  with  infe- 
rior opportunities  she  has  rivalled  and  in  many  re- 
spects surpassed  both  England  and  the  United  States 
in  the  excellence  and  cheapness  of  her  manufactures. 
In  Germany  as  nowhere  else  in  the  world  and  as  never 
before  in  history  autocracy  has  achieved  an  almost 
perfect  industrial  success. 

This  success,  moreover,  and  herein  lies  the  threat 
of  autocracy  to  the  freer  peoples  throughout  the  world, 
has  been  attained  without  alienating  the  loyalty  of  its 
citizens.  We  must  not  forget  that  the  patriotic  spirit 
of  the  Germans  is  as  fervid  as  that  of  the  French  and 
English,  that  they  have  made  unspeakable  sacrifices 
and  borne  patiently  greater  hardships  than  have  any 
other  of  the  large  nations  in  the  struggle.  Such 
patriotism  bespeaks  more  than  ingrained  obedience 
and  sacrifice  of  self  at  the  behest  of  the  state.  It  is 
born  of  material  well-being,  opportunity  for  recrea- 
tion and  culture,  education,  security,  and  freedom 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  41 

from  the  terrors  of  accident  and  old  age — all  these 
made  possible  by  autocratic  foresight  and  executive 
ability. 

Is  it  not  significant  that  despite  a  population  too 
vast  for  her  restricted  territories,  Germany  has  sent 
to  America  during  the  last  two  decades  far  fewer 
emigrants  than  in  the  '50's  and  '60's  when  her  indus- 
trial system  had  not  been  established  and  her  popu- 
lation was  relatively  small?  Germany,  the  least 
democratic  of  the  great  nations,  has  succeeded  where 
the  democratic  countries  have  failed:  she  has  cared 
for  her  people,  seen  to  their  bodily  welfare,  and 
largely  contented  them.  The  wisdom  of  Bismarck 
in  stealing  the  thunder  of  the  social-democrats  and 
anticipating  the  popular  demand  for  industrial  better- 
ment has  been  vindicated  by  the  loyalty  of  the  Ger- 
mans to  their  government  in  this  war.  They  have 
suffered  much  and  may  yet  endure  more.  Restriction 
of  liberty  at  the  polls,  in  the  press,  in  speech,  weigh 
little  against  the  outstanding  fact  that  in  Germany, 
during  peace,  life  is  reasonably  secure,  material 
comfort  assured  to  all  who  will  accept  their  lot  in 
life  as  determined  by  birth  and  material  circumstance, 
and  old  age,  accident,  and  ill-health  are  robbed  in 
part  of  their  terrors  by  a  thorough  and  compulsory 
system  of  state  insurance. 

In  England,  France,  and  the  United  States  the 
worker  has  a  vote,  he  may  go  and  come  as  he  likes, 


42        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

he  may  speak  freely  in  criticism  of  his  government 
and  his  king  or  president.  But  he  has  few  other 
privileges  and  may  better  his  material  position  only 
through  his  own  efforts  or  through  co-operation  in  a 
labour  union.  The  state  does  little  to  aid  him,  little  to 
insure  shorter  hours  of  toil,  better  working  conditions, 
higher  wages,  or  security  in  illness  and  old  age.  He 
can  secure  only  what  he  is  able  to  extort  by  political 
and  industrial  pressure,  and  this  is  far  less  actual  than 
theoretical.  Like  his  fellows  in  all  but  the  capi- 
talistic class  he  is  the  victim  of  circumstance,  must 
take  whatever  employment  offers,  at  the  usual  wage, 
and  is  seldom  so  fortunate  as  materially  to  improve 
his  condition.  The  state  does  not  insure  him  a  sound 
education,  adequate  training  for  any  calling,  nor  does 
it  care  for  him  when  he  and  his  family  become  the 
victims  of  accident  or  industrial  depressions. 

The  German  statesman  looks  upon  the  democratic 
countries  with  contempt.  He  sees  their  wasteful 
methods,  their  disease,  crime,  and  poverty.  He 
sees  that  only  after  much  time  and  loss  do  they  be- 
come efficient  in  war.  The  autocracy  of  Germany 
seems  by  comparison  a  far  more  efficient  form  of 
government.  Nor  is  the  German  worker  blind  to  the 
same  contrast.  He  sees  that  political  freedom 
divorced  from  industrial  security  is  illusory.  He 
would  wish  more  voting  power,  a  fuller  representation 
in  the  Reichstag,  and  other  reforms.  But  he  clings 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  43 

to  his  manifest  advantages  and  prefers  to  remain  in 
Germany  under  his  kaiser  and  bureaucrats  rather 
than  emigrate  to  freer  countries  where  the  advantages 
he  knows  at  home  are  to  be  won  only  by  the  few. 

In  England  and  the  United  States  we  have  made  a 
little  progress  in  social  legislation  and  improvement 
during  the  last  fifteen  years,  stirred  thereto  by  the 
example  of  Germany.  But  broadly  speaking  the  con- 
trast is  as  stated.  Politically  we  are  free,  not  actually 
but  potentially.  Freedom  is  ours,  that  is  to  say,  if  we 
have  the  sense  to  seize  it.  But  industrially  we  are  not 
free  but  enslaved;  not  to  specific  institutions,  govern- 
ments, and  kings  but  to  the  unregulated  social  and 
economic  forces  of  our  society.  We  are  enslaved  in 
the  sense  that  the  savage  is  enslaved  by  ignorance,  the 
whim  of  the  seasons,  the  fertility  of  soil  and  timeli- 
ness of  rains,  or  the  migrations  of  the  elk  and  caribou. 
Classes  and  groups  struggling  to  achieve  control  of 
the  sources  of  wealth  enslave  the  individual  no  less 
than  do  the  forces  of  nature. 

Economic  well  being  is  not  the  whole  of  life,  to  be 
sure.  Freedom  of  movement  and  speech,  the  right 
to  vote  for  one's  representative  in  government,  are 
great  and  important  rights,  won  at  great  cost  and 
marking  a  long  step  in  human  progress.  But  the 
rights  of  education,  enjoyment  of  leisure,  freedom 
from  the  terrors  of  accident,  sickness,  and  pauperism 
are  great  rights  also;  they,  too,  are  liberty,  and  of 


44        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

this  kind  of  liberty  the  democratic  peoples  know  all 
too  little.  The  well-disciplined  German,  innocent  of 
a  desire  to  walk  upon  the  grass  plot  marked  verboten, 
feels  it  no  restriction  upon  his  freedom  that  he  may 
not.  But  were  he  deprived  of  those  privileges  for 
which  he  cares,  his  right  of  recreation  and  music,  and 
his  freedom  from  insecurity  he  would  shake  the  pil- 
lars of  empire.  A  free  citizen  of  the  United  States 
may  exercise  the  right  to  vote,  may  denounce  presi- 
dent and  congress,  and  may  read  and  circulate  revo- 
lutionary literature.  But  he  may,  incidentally,  never 
realize  a  decent  education,  the  right  to  sleep  in  a  com- 
fortable bed,  breathe  fresh  air,  and  play  with  his 
children  in  a  garden  of  his  own. 

Never  before  has  autocracy  been  so  formidable  to 
the  progress  of  the  world  as  that  of  Germany  now,  for 
never  before  has  autocracy  contrived  to  make  its 
people  so  content.  And  we  might  be  tempted  to  add 
that  democracy  has  not  for  long  been  so  feeble  as 
now,  in  view  of  the  tremendous  coalition  needed  to 
defeat  Germany.  But  democracy  has  thus  far  in 
the  world's  history  been  largely  illusory,  an  aspira- 
tion rather  than  an  achieved  fact.  It  has  never  been 
so  paramount  as  autocracy  now  is  in  Germany.  Per- 
haps it  may  demonstrate  its  power,  once  firmly  estab- 
lished and  more  completely  realized,  to  control  the  in- 
dustrial forces  of  society  so  that  all  its  citizens  may 
know  security  and  bodily  well  being.  That,  at  any 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  45 

rate,  is  democracy's  one  hope  not  alone  against  Ger- 
many but  against  autocracy  the  world  over.  Ger- 
many defeated  in  this  war  will  grow  strong  again. 
We  cannot  impose  our  institutions  upon  her  by 
force.  The  spirit  of  autocracy  in  Germany,  if  it  is 
to  be  destroyed  must  be  destroyed  from  within.  And 
this  can  be  only  when  the  German  citizen  looking 
abroad  sees  the  examples  of  a  finer  and  freer  way  of 
life  in  the  democratic  states  about  him.  If  he  sees 
this  truer  freedom  and  finer  life  manifested  in  the 
institutions  and  social  well  being  of  his  neighbours 
he  will  be  emulous  of  them. 

These  ideals  and  object  lessons  we  must  supply. 
We  must  exemplify  in  the  organization  and  conduct 
of  our  peoples  the  possibilities  of  a  democracy  truly 
free  yet  efficient.  This  is  our  one  hope  not  alone  for 
the  defeat  of  Germany  but  for  the  defeat  of  autocracy 
the  world  over.  For  it  is  not  impossible  that  a  re- 
alignment of  autocratic  powers,  twenty-five  or  fifty 
years  hence,  might  overthrow  the  struggling,  half- 
realized  democracies  of  the  world.  Suppose  the  cen- 
tral powers,  humiliated  by  the  terms  of  peace  and 
desirous  of  revenge,  preparing  themselves  for  a  sec- 
ond war,  allying  themselves  with  an  autocratic  Japan 
which  controls  China  and  her  resources  of  men  and 
materials.  Suppose  India  clamouring  for  self-gov- 
ernment denied  by  England.  The  mastery  of  the 
world  might  pass  to  autocracy  and  the  democratic 


46        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

ideal  be  delayed  a  hundred  years  in  its  realization. 
Only  as  democracy  conquers  not  by  the  sword  but 
by  the  evidences  it  gives  of  its  divine  fitness  to  rule 
because  of  its  advancement  of  human  welfare  will  it 
effectually  overcome  militarism  and  the  desire  for 
imperial  sway.  Then  only  will  the  German  or  the 
Japanese  look  with  discontent  upon  the  social  system 
of  which  he  is  a  part  and  alter  it  after  a  better  model. 

§4 

What  is  this  democracy  in  whose  name  we  make 
war  upon  autocracy?  We  associate  it  in  some  way 
with  freedom,  but  the  nature  of  this  freedom,  the  re- 
strictions imposed  upon  it  by  necessity,  and  the  pos- 
sibilities of  its  enlargement  we  often  do  not  consider. 
Complete  freedom  of  the  individual  means,  doubt- 
less, opportunity  to  do  whatsoever  he  wills,  to  work, 
or  rest,  or  play  as  he  likes,  to  go  wherever  he  elects, 
to  eat  what  he  prefers,  and  gratify  all  bodily  and 
mental  desires  as  he  chooses.  Such  freedom  is  im- 
possible to  man.  Barriers  of  seas  and  mountains,  an 
imperious  hunger,  which  he  must  satisfy,  and  the  con- 
flicting desires  of  other  men  with  whom  he  must  per- 
force live,  hedge  in  each  one,  confine  him  to  a  rela- 
tively small  portion  of  the  earth's  surface,  impose 
upon  him  the  necessity  of  toil  if  he  is  to  eat,  and 
demand  that  the  conflict  of  his  desires  with  those  of 
other  men  be  somehow  reconciled.  Government  in 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  47 

communities  and  states  is  the  imperative  compromise 
effected  by  individuals  each  desirous  of  doing  many 
things  the  right  to  which  he  must  surrender  if  he  is 
to  retain  others.  The  surrender  of  liberties  is,  then, 
the  first  requisite  for  the  establishment  of  any  gov- 
ernment. The  function  of  government  is  to  make 
the  surrender  rest  as  lightly  as  possible  upon  the  in- 
dividual and  to  compensate  for  it  by  the  grant  of 
privileges  which  spring  from  the  association  of  in- 
dividuals under  wise  guidance. 

In  empires,  kingdoms,  and  aristocracies  the  sur- 
render of  freedom  is  not  uniform  throughout  the 
state  nor  is  the  distribution  of  new  freedoms  under 
the  government,  equal.  Kings  and  lords  enjoy  im- 
munities unknown  to  the  mass  of  the  people.  The 
theory  upon  which  freedom  of  movement,  exemption 
from  manual  toil,  and  other  privileges  are  granted 
the  few  or  forcibly  seized  by  them  is  that  in  return 
these  chosen  individuals  shall  give  their  services  to 
the  wise  governing  of  the  state.  It  is  held  that 
wealth,  lands,  and  hereditary  succession  are  essential 
to  the  maintenance  of  such  leadership.  The  system 
of  government  is  so  devised  as  to  make  the  persistence 
of  the  social  order  as  established,  secure.  Were  the 
rulers  freely  elected  to  office  by  the  people,  the  reten- 
tion of  privilege  in  the  hands  of  a  class  would  not 
long  continue.  A  king  if  elected  is,  therefore,  elected 
by  the  nobles  or  those  representative  of  the  prop- 


48        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

ertied  interests.  He  is  not  chosen,  as  in  the  tribe,  by 
the  vote  of  all  the  warriors.  A  property  qualifica- 
tion has  been  established. 

As  wealth  accumulates  and  as  political  power 
comes  to  mean  increased  privilege — immunity  from 
toil,  choicer  food,  more  delicate  women,  exemptions 
before  the  law — political  machinery  manipulated  by 
a  ruling  class  is  made  to  subserve  the  interests  of  that 
class  at  the  expense  of  the  mass.  Without  the  debas- 
ing pressure  of  privilege  and  exemption  the  aristo- 
crat, or  much  more,  the  king,  has  as  an  incentive  to 
honourable  action  the  admiration  and  good  will  of 
his  people.  But  with  privilege  and  the  power  to  per- 
petuate privilege  by  political  control,  selfish  gratifica- 
tions become  usually  more  seductive  than  the  desire 
for  honour.  It  is  then  that  empires  become  magnifi- 
cent and  are  destroyed,  that  aristocracies  perish  of 
dry  rot,  and  new  rulers  and  new  hereditary  orders 
succeed  the  old  and  repeat  the  cycle  of  glory  and 
decay. 

Such  has  been  the  history  of  the  world  until  recent 
times  and  the  growth  of  the  democratic  ideal.  An 
hereditary  aristocracy  has  resisted  the  movement  of 
the  mass  to  take  political  power  into  its  hands,  and 
still  resists,  as  in  England,  by  absorbing  men  of 
political  and  financial  achievements,  thus  renewing  its 
blood  and  increasing  its  wealth.  Nevertheless  the 
democratic  ideal,  that  men  should  share  equally  in  the 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  49 

burdens  and  privileges  of  government,  has  grown 
stronger  and  modified  the  political  institutions  of  all 
progressive  countries.  Yet  with  the  extension  of  the 
franchise  and  the  adoption  of  various  devices  whereby 
the  participation  in  government  of  hitherto  inarticu- 
late classes  has  seemed  assured  has  come  little 
amelioration  of  the  common  lot.  Men  have  fought 
for  the  ballot  thinking  that  in  it  lay  the  power  to 
set  them  free,  and  they  have  found  themselves  still 
the  slaves  of  circumstance.  Aristocracies  and  class 
distinctions  may  be  swept  away,  kings  and  titles  de- 
stroyed, but  power  remains,  as  before,  not  with  the 
mass  but  with  a  class. 

Power  resides  in  property.  Those  with  wealth 
have  found  a  hundred  ways  in  which  to  emasculate 
democratic  political  institutions  whose  purpose  has 
been  to  establish  genuine  popular  control  of  govern- 
ment. To  retain  the  privileges  and  immunities  of 
aristocracy,  if  not  the  name,  has  been  the  object 
and  to  a  great  extent  the  achievement  of  the  propertied 
class.  It  has  resorted  to  bribery,  controlled  the  ma- 
chinery of  elections,  intimidated  and  bewildered  the 
masses,  and  seduced  popular  leaders  inimical  to  its 
security  in  ways  no  less  efficacious  than  direct  bribery: 
by  marriage  alliances,  social  recognition,  flattery,  by 
offering  easy  roads  to  wealth.  Like  all  intelligent 
aristocracies  it  has  seen  that  the  permanency  of  its 
tenure  to  power  lies  in  its  ability  to  absorb  the  most 


50        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

courageous,  ambitious,  and  intelligent  of  the  men  of 
all  classes  who  seek  to  rise.  The  mass  is  powerless 
without  leaders.  It  is  the  policy  of  aristocracy  to  be 
hospitable  to  such  men  and  make  them  a  part  of  it- 
self. 

Democracy  may  mean,  then,  and  does  mean  today 
in  America  three  things :  It  is  an  ideal  of  government 
— of  the  people,  by  the  people,  and  for  the  people — 
an  ideal  only  in  part  realized;  it  means  institutions 
to  the  attainment  of  this  ideal,  and  these  in  part  we 
have,  though  their  efficacy  has  not  proved  what  we 
hoped;  and  lastly  it  means  opportunity  to  rise  from 
the  mass  and  share  in  the  privileges  and  immunities 
of  class.  It  is  upon  this  equality  of  opportunity 
that  as  a  nation  we  chiefly  pride  ourselves.  This  is 
the  democracy  which  appeals  to  the  ambitious  Ameri- 
can. It  is  his  boast  and  belief  that  anyone  in  the 
country  has  the  opportunity  of  becoming  president,  or 
what  is  yet  more  desirable,  a  captain  of  industry 
and  master  of  great  wealth. 

Yet  if  this  democracy  of  opportunity  upon  which 
the  American  prides  himself  ever  truly  existed,  does 
it  exist  today  as  widely  as  once?  Does  not  the  growth 
in  power  and  stability  of  our  industries  and  financial 
institutions  and  the  concentration  of  the  country's 
wealth  in  the  hands  of  a  relatively  small  class,  yearly 
increase  the  difficulty  of  entrance  into  that  class? 
The  boastful  American  points  to  a  Harriman,  Schwab, 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  51 

or  Ford  to  prove  his  belief  that  any  "hustling" 
American  can  become  a  millionaire  provided  he  has 
the  brains  and  the  grit,  but  I  believe  that  the  advertis- 
ing pages  of  the  popular  magazines  afford  a  better 
clue  to  the  trend  of  the  times.  In  them  you  will  read 
of  the  fifty-thousand  dollar  man  and  the  hundred- 
thousand  dollar  man  wanted  to  manage  a  great  in- 
dustry, or  of  the  man  who  attained  such  a  position 
through  mastering  an  encyclopedia  or  a  memory 
system.  It  is  a  large  wage,  but  still  a  wage.  The 
organizing  and  directing  genius  of  the  country  may 
rise  high  in  the  service  of  vested  wealth.  But  it  is 
the  servant  of  it  and  maintains  its  place  only  for  serv- 
ice rendered.  De  Tocqueville  predicted  that  the  dan- 
ger to  American  democratic  institutions  lay  in  the  ap- 
propriation of  legal  talent  to  the  services  of  wealth 
and  industry.  That  prediction  came  to  pass  long  ago. 
We  witness  today  the  analogous  appropriation  of  in- 
dustrial and  business  talent  to  the  like  service.  De- 
mocracy of  opportunity  in  America  means  the  oppor- 
tunity to  become  a  high  salaried  servant,  and  this 
opportunity  is  open  only  to  a  few,  by  reason  of  un- 
equal education,  strength,  chance,  and  a  host  of  factors 
which  make  the  freest  competition  other  than  "free." 
But  equality  of  opportunity,  if,  with  the  unequal 
powers  of  men  such  can  ever  truly  exist,  is  not  the 
ideal  democracy  for  which  men  are  willing  to  die. 
By  equality  of  opportunity  we  mean,  at  the  best,  op- 


52        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

portunity  to  surpass  our  fellows  and  attain  privileges 
which  they  do  not  enjoy:  it  is  equal  opportunity  to  at- 
tain the  state  of  inequality.  So  defined,  democracy 
could  connote  neither  equality  nor  freedom.  It  is 
a  far  remove  from  that  aspiration  to  bear  equally 
and  share  equally  which,  I  take  it,  men  feel  the  demo- 
cratic ideal  to  be:  the  belief  that  all  men,  however  un- 
equal their  powers,  should  have  equal  opportunity 
for  happiness,  self  realization  to  the  best  of  their 
ability,  and  equal  freedom,  practicable  in  a  society, 
from  the  restraints  upon  the  body.  Such  an  ideal 
demands  that  political  power  equally  shared  be  de- 
voted to  the  establishment  of  an  industrial  democracy. 
Free  political  institutions,  desirable  as  these  are,  do 
not  constitute  a  sufficient  end  in  themselves.  They 
are  chiefly  desirable  as  an  instrument  whereby  men 
may  attain  a  more  tangible  equality  in  labour,  goods, 
and  opportunity  for  enjoyment. 

Freedom,  let  us  repeat,  can  never  be  absolute.  It 
can  mean  only  this:  a  bondage  equally  shared,  a 
privilege  equally  enjoyed.  It  is  not  that  autocracy 
imposes  restrictions  upon  the  will  of  the  individual 
which  makes  it  irksome.  All  society  must  restrict 
the  individual.  But  that  this  restriction  may  be  as 
light  as  possible  it  must  be  imposed  and  borne  by  all. 
Only  as  men  bear  and  share  alike  can  they  work  to  the 
common  end  of  making  their  burdens  lighter  and 
their  enjoyment  greater.  When  the  burden  is  un- 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  53 

equal,  selfishness  inevitably  leads  the  few  to  profit  at 
the  expense  of  the  many.  And  this  is  autocracy,  the 
imposition  of  the  will  of  the  few  upon  the  conduct 
of  the  many.  Autocracy  may  be  the  despotic  mili- 
tarism of  Prussia,  an  aristocracy  of  titles  and  land, 
or  a  plutocracy.  Whatever  its  form  its  substance 
is  the  same  and  its  ultimate  effect  upon  men  malefi- 
cent, however  kindly  and  paternalistic  its  intent. 

§5 

If  the  ideals  of  democracy  are  increasingly  to  de- 
termine the  relations  of  states  and  nations  one  with 
another,  something  in  the  nature  of  an  international 
court  to  which  the  smaller  peoples  may  appeal  for 
justice  against  the  aggressions  of  more  powerful  na- 
tions is  a  first  requisite.  The  Hague  Court  was  a  ten- 
tative essay  in  this  direction  but  was  of  small  practical 
value  by  reason  of  its  powerlessness  to  enforce  de- 
cisions. The  League  to  Enforce  Peace,  which  seems 
a  likelihood  at  the  conclusion  of  the  present  war, 
bears  in  its  very  name  better  promise  of  success. 
Regrettable  though  it  may  be,  force  is  still  essential 
to  the  maintenance  of  law  and  order  in  society,  both 
in  the  state  and  in  the  realm  of  international  affairs. 
The  time  has  not  yet  come  to  dispense  with  it.  But 
the  time  has  certainly  come  when  force  should  be 
made  subservient  to  justice  and  no  longer  be  the 
weapon  of  national  ambition  over-riding  the  wishes 


54        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

and  rights  of  weaker  peoples.  If  the  nations  are  re- 
garded for  what  they  are,  merely  families  of  the 
world  clan,  or  individual  members  of  a  single  family, 
there  is  nothing  startling  in  the  conception  of  a  court 
established  by  common  consent  and  greater  in  power 
than  any  one  of  its  members;  a  court  to  which  the 
individual  states  delegate  their  powers  and  by  whose 
decisions  they  agree  to  abide. 

As  individuals  each  of  us  is  subservient  to  law,  be- 
fore which,  ideally,  we  stand  upon  an  equal  footing. 
The  citizen  attacked  by  a  bully  appeals  to  it  for  pro- 
tection. That  he  could  not,  of  his  own  might,  resist 
the  cowardly  attack  for  which  he  seeks  redress  is  the 
very  cause  of  the  court's  existence.  The  court  as- 
sumes the  equality  of  individuals  before  it  not  in  their 
powers  physical,  mental,  or  moral  but  in  their  right  to 
safety  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  They  are  equal 
as  souls.  And  it  is  in  the  terms  of  this  abstract  equal- 
ity that  nations  must  be  judged  before  the  bar  of  an 
international  court.  The  nation  that  by  reason  of 
its  size  or  arrogance  encroaches  upon  its  neighbour 
can  base  no  defence  upon  the  old  maxim  that  might 
is  right.  Nor  can  it  safely  be  permitted  to  swagger, 
gun  on  hip,  through  the  public  streets.  It  is  the  func- 
tion of  the  police,  whether  municipal  or  international, 
to  disarm  ruffians,  the  function  of  the  court  to  mete 
out  punishment,  the  function  of  religion,  education, 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  55 

and  moral  example  to  reform  them  and  lead  them  to  a 
better  way  of  life. 

The  degree  of  domestic  interference  which  should 
be  permitted  a  court  cannot  easily  be  denned.  Fam- 
ily affairs  and  domestic  quarrels  we  are  inclined  to 
leave  alone  unless  they  intrude  so  violently  upon  the 
peace  and  comfort  of  neighbours  that  they  are  deemed 
a  public  nuisance.  Then  we  call  for  the  police.  We 
do  not  individually  interfere,  for  we  feel  incompe- 
tent to  the  task.  A  dispassionate  tribunal  is  essen- 
tial to  the  adjudication  of  the  issues.  The  interfer- 
ing neighbour  whose  nerves  have  been  set  on  edge, 
or  to  whose  interest  it  is  that  the  dispute  should  be 
settled  in  one  way  rather  than  another,  is  not  the 
proper  person  to  decide  the  case.  The  analogy  of 
this  generalized  instance  to  the  recent  revolution  in 
Mexico  and  the  conduct  of  the  United  States  is  ob- 
vious. The  United  States  was  too  close  a  neighbour, 
her  interests  too  deeply  involved,  to  interfere.  But 
had  there  been  a  competent  international  court,  Mex- 
ico's case  should  have  been  passed  upon  in  short 
order  and  she  forced  to  a  more  neighbourly  manner 
of  living. 

If  we  pursue  the  analogy  of  the  domestic  court 
to  an  international  court  a  step  farther,  it  would  seem 
only  sensible  to  grant  the  league  of  nations,  as  repre- 
sented in  their  tribunal,  control  of  the  seas  and  all 


56        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

highways  necessary  to  free  intercommunication,  per- 
mitting all  nations  equal  rights  thereto.  A  highroad 
is  free  to  all,  subject  to  regulations  essential  to  its 
proper  use.  If  necessary  it  is  policed.  There  is  also 
a  further  extension  of  this  right  of  free  communica- 
tion. One  possessed  of  a  piece  of  property  com- 
pletely surrounded  by  land  owned  by  others  has 
nevertheless  the  right  of  access  to  it.  Otherwise  it 
would  be  largely  valueless  to  him,  for  he  would  be 
completely  dependent  upon  his  neighbour's  goodwill 
and  sense  of  justice.  What  then  of  Poland,  Servia, 
the  small  states  which  may  perhaps  be  formed  from 
the  disintegration  of  Austria?  And  what  of  Ger- 
many in  need  of  a  port  upon  warm  water  and  of  a 
trade  route  through  the  Balkans  to  the  Levant?  Why 
should  these  legitimate  needs  be  denied?  Railroads 
and  docking  privileges  at  the  most  desirable  seaports, 
and  these  free  from  tariffs  and  unjust  exactions,  could 
be  granted  all  inland  countries  were  the  principles  of 
common  justice  as  they  have  been  developed  in  civ- 
ilized countries  extended  to  international  relations. 

These  first  steps  for  the  establishment  of  better 
international  relations  demand  no  radical  departures 
from  the  principles  of  common  justice  proved  prac- 
ticable in  hundreds  of  years  of  human  intercourse. 
That  they  should  seem  at  all  novel  to  us  is  a  com- 
mentary upon  the  archaic  system  of  international 
relations  as  we  have  hitherto  known  it.  The  citizen's 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  57 

rights,  his  personal  freedom,  the  protection  he  enjoys, 
have  grown  immensely  during  the  last  two  centuries. 
But  international  relations  have  not  so  changed.  The 
attitude  of  states  one  to  another  is  still  mediaeval. 
Its  nearest  parallel  in  domestic  conditions  would  be, 
perhaps,  the  relations  of  the  barons  in  England  in  the 
"troublesome  reign  of  King  John."  England  was 
then  a  group  of  virtually  independent  baronies,  earl- 
doms, and  duchies  incessantly  at  war  and  requiring 
a  strong  overlord  to  bring  them  to  law  and  order  and 
permit  industry  to  develop  and  commerce  to  flow 
freely.  This  is  much  the  international  condition  and 
need  today. 

A  yet  more  suggestive  parallel  because  economic — 
and  the  root  of  our  present  international  rivalry  and 
suspicion  is  largely  economic — is  the  state  of  the  Ger- 
man principalities  and  kingdoms  previous  to  the 
formation  of  the  customs  union  which  paved  the  way 
to  the  establishment  of  the  empire.  Every  kingdom, 
duchy,  and  free  city  exacted  its  toll  from  merchandise 
carried  through  it  from  a  seaport  to  an  inland  destina- 
tion. This  condition  of  affairs  was  intolerable,  for 
it  stifled  economic  life  and  industrial  development. 
Upon  the  removal  of  these  economic  barriers  and  the 
virtual  creation  of  Germany  as  an  industrial  unit,  she 
grew  immediately  in  economic  power.  It  is  signifi- 
cant that  this  economic  union  preceded  and  was  the 
direct  cause  of  a  closer  political  union.  And  sim- 


58        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

ilar  conditions  and  results  may  be  observed  in  the 
early  history  of  our  own  country.  The  intolerable 
economic  conditions  which  prevailed  under  the  Ar- 
ticles of  Confederation  led  to  our  present  constitu- 
tion, under  which  Congress,  though  granted  restricted 
powers  in  many  respects,  was  permitted  complete  con- 
trol of  customs  duties  and  all  interstate  commerce. 

Thought  of  as  an  economic  unit,  every  part  of 
which  is  in  some  degree  dependent  upon  other  and 
alien  parts,  the  world  presents  today  much  the  appear- 
ance of  the  thirteen  original  colonies  prior  to  1789, 
or  Germany  after  the  Napoleonic  wars.  Tariffs  and 
export  duties,  control  of  trade  routes  and  canals,  Gib- 
raltar and  Suez,  are  so  many  checks  upon  the  free 
flow  of  commerce,  so  many  stoppages  in  the  arteries 
of  the  world.  If  the  world  is  to  become  a  place  in 
which  the  nations  stand  upon  an  equal  footing,  indus- 
trially no  less  than  politically,  these  checks  must  be 
done  away  with.  These  artificial  barriers  are  relics 
of  a  primitive  and  selfish  conception  of  the  state,  of 
the  belief  that  a  nation  should  profit  at  the  expense 
of  its  neighbour.  That  individual  states  may  profit 
by  the  accidents  of  situation  or  by  the  control  of 
colonies  and  trade  routes  backed  by  military  power  is 
unhappily  the  case,  but  that  every  selfish  gain  so  ex- 
acted is  a  net  economic  loss  to  the  world  is  equally 
certain.  Every  delay  and  exaction  making  the  inter- 
change of  goods  slow,  difficult,  and  costly  is  an  addi- 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  59 

tion  to  the  original  cost  of  the  goods,  so  much  lost 
from  the  working  time  of  the  world,  and  insofar  an 
artificial  check  upon  industry  and  the  arts.  A  free 
circulation  is  essential  to  health  alike  in  the  indi- 
vidual, the  nation,  and  the  world.1 

But  tariffs,  and  the  wealth  and  power  which  they 
give  those  nations  most  favoured  by  geographic  posi- 
tion, capital,  organization,  and  military  fitness,  are 
much  more  than  checks  upon  the  economic  life  of  the 
world  and  a  means  to  the  inequitable  distribution  of 
the  world's  wealth.  They  are  a  direct  cause  of  inter- 
national strife.  A  recent  instance  of  this  fact  is  of- 
fered in  the  case  of  the  present  war  of  which  one  of 
the  underlying  causes  was  a  highly  discriminatory 
trade  treaty  forced  by  Germany  upon  Russia  during 
the  Russo-Japanese  war,  a  treaty  which  benefitted 
Germany  greatly  at  Russia's  expense.  Provisions  of 
this  treaty  protecting  the  German  farmer  from  the 
importation  of  Russian  agricultural  products  demark 
a  segment  of  the  vicious  circle  of  trade  wars  and  im- 
perial ambitions.  German  farmers,  tilling  poor  soil 
under  adverse  economic  conditions,  were  subsidized 
in  order  that  Germany,  in  time  of  war,  might  be  able 
to  feed  her  people  from  her  own  produce.  German 

1  President  Wilson's  advocacy  of  the  removal  of  tariff  barriers 
—  a  purpose  which  has  aroused  much  uneasiness  among  the  capital- 
istic class  in  this  country  —  promises  to  make  the  economic  causes  of 
war  an  important  consideration  in  the  negotiations  for  a  permanent 
peace. 


60        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

foresight  has  been  justified  in  the  event.  German 
blindness  in  forcing  an  unjust  treaty  upon  Russia  and 
in  strengthening  German  manufactures  at  the  expense 
of  the  Russian  farmer  made  Russia,  needlessly,  her 
enemy.  More  than  this,  the  German  policy  and  all 
similar  policies  which  foster  industries  and  agricul- 
ture under  adverse  natural  conditions,  are  the  cause 
of  an  economic  loss  to  mankind.  The  German  farm- 
ers would  better  have  engaged  in  some  other  occupa- 
tion and  imported  their  grain  from  Russia  where  it 
could  be  more  profitably  and  easily  grown. 

Were  the  world  an  economic  unit  under  the  direc- 
tion of  a  single  expert,  Mr.  Hoover  perhaps,  it  is  easy 
to  imagine  him  issuing  his  decrees  and  planning  the 
maximum  yield  for  the  minimum  of  effort  expended. 
Argentine,  Canada,  Russia,  and  the  United  States 
might  perhaps  be  commanded  to  grow  sufficient  wheat 
and  beef  cattle  to  supply  the  world's  need.  The 
Scandinavian  countries,  the  United  States,  and  the 
countries  bordering  the  Andes  would  be  made  the 
manufacturing  centres  of  the  world  for  all  mineral 
products  by  reason  of  their  mines  and  cheap  water 
power.  Cotton  would  be  spun  and  woven  chiefly  in 
the  Appalachian  highlands.  To  each  part  of  the 
world  would  be  assigned  that  portion  of  the  world's 
industry  to  which  it  was  best  suited  by  reason  of  sit- 
uation, raw  materials,  transportation  facilities  and  the 
Jike.  The  problem  is,  of  course,  vastly  more  compli- 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  61 

cated  in  fact  than  this  Utopian  solution  indicates, 
for  the  world's  population  is  not  distributed  in  accord- 
ance with  the  best  possible  economic  development. 
In  countries  such  as  England,  Germany,  and  Holland 
it  is  too  dense.  In  Australia,  parts  of  Africa  and  the 
United  States  it  is  too  sparse.  This  uneven  distribu- 
tion is  largely  the  result  of  the  artificial  conditions 
which  natural  barriers,  tariffs,  and  national  rivalries 
and  ambitions  have  fostered.  But  were  the  world  in 
the  hands  of  a  dictator  a  first  consideration  would  be 
the  redistribution  of  the  world's  population  in  accord- 
ance with  economic  needs. 

The  pressure  of  population,  due  to  racial  division, 
national  rivalries,  geographical  barriers,  Jariff s,  and 
similar  natural  or  artificial  causes,  is  a  permanent 
source  of  international  friction  and  a  root  cause  of 
the  present  war.  Consequent  upon  its  industrial  ex- 
pansion fostered  by  the  government's  policy  of  sub- 
sidizing manufactories  and  establishing  trade  and 
technical  schools,  the  wealth  of  Germany  permitted  a 
vast  increase  of  population  while  at  the  same  time 
the  scale  of  living  was  raised.  But  Germany  is  a 
small  country  to  house  sixty  millions  of  people  and 
the  pressure  has  been  increasingly  felt,  expressing 
itself  in  Germany's  attempt  to  gain  colonies  oversea. 
Her  success  has  been  small,  for  the  unappropriated 
parts  of  the  globe  have  proved  largely  uninhabitable 
to  white  men.  England,  similarly  situated  indus- 


62        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

trially,  has  drawn  off  much  of  her  surplus  population 
to  her  prosperous  colonies.  Germany,  balked  in  her 
attempts  elsewhere,  has  attempted,  therefore,  to  ex- 
pand to  the  southeast,  centering  her  ambitions  in  Asia 
Minor,  a  region  offering  both  markets  and,  if  scien- 
tifically developed,  a  home  for  a  dense  white  popula- 
tion. 

The  alternative  to  such  overflow  of  population  and 
seizure  of  colonies  is  periodic  war  wherein  the  excess 
male  population  is  killed  off  and,  in  the  German 
philosophy,  the  warlike  spirit  of  the  race  thereby 
maintained.  In  practice  Germany  has  resorted  to 
both  expedients  in  her  efforts  both  to  relieve  pressure 
at  home  and  to  acquire  imperial  power.  And  in  so 
doing  Germany  has  followed  the  practice  of  the  white 
race  throughout  history,  though  of  late  the  expansion 
of  the  white  man  has  been  at  the  expense  chiefly  of  the 
black  and  yellow  peoples.  The  colonization  of  the 
Americas  has  meant  in  part  the  destruction  and  in 
part  the  absorption  of  the  Indian.  The  Bushman 
and  the  Maori  are  all  but  extinct,  and  in  South  Africa 
those  regions  best  suited  to  white  settlement  have 
been  largely  cleared  of  their  original  inhabitants. 
The  white  man  has  not  always  resorted  to  slaughter 
to  demonstrate  his  superior  fitness  to  rule.  His  vices 
and  diseases,  the  changed  conditions  of  life  which 
his  coming  forces  upon  native  peoples,  have  usually 
been  sufficient  to  clear  his  path  for  him.  Whiskey 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  63 

and  small  pox  are  more  deadly  than  the  repeating 
rifle. 

Pressure  of  population  and  the  need  of  colonies 
are  not,  however,  problems  peculiar  to  the  white  race. 
The  yellow  race,  equally  tenacious,  fertile,  and  con- 
fident of  its  destiny,  also  needs  room  in  which  to  grow. 
Japan,  in  Korea  and  Manchuria,  is  finding  homes  for 
the  overflow  of  her  people;  the  Chinese  have  spread 
along  the  Malay  Peninsula  and  through  the  East  In- 
dies. Had  they  not  been  excluded  they  would  have 
colonized  Australia  and  the  Pacific  slope  of  the  United 
States. 

The  white  and  yellow  races  face  the  problem  of 
acquiring  sufficient  and  suitable  lands  for  the  main- 
tenance of  an  evergrowing  population  or  of  limiting 
their  populations  to  the  resources  which  they  now 
possess.  Advances  in  agricultural  science  permit,  to 
be  sure,  ever  denser  and  self-sufficing  populations 
upon  lands  already  occupied,  but  the  growth  in  food 
supply  cannot  keep  pace  with  the  growth  in  numbers. 
There  is  a  limit  to  the  tillable  soil  and  to  its  pro- 
ductivity. To  human  fertility  unchecked  by  war, 
disease,  or  deliberate  control,  there  is  no  limit. 
What,  then,  must  be  the  outcome  of  this  struggle  for 
land?  Either  the  world  must  persist  in  its  present 
course,  the  fiercer  races  preying  upon  the  weaker  and 
when  these  are  destroyed  turning  upon  each  other  in 
a  brute  unending  struggle,  or  more  intelligent  methods 


64        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

must  guide  man  in  his  adaptation  to  his  environment. 
Man  has  thus  far  obeyed  his  brute  instincts.  He  has 
now  to  demonstrate  his  possession  of  a  higher  intel- 
ligence wherewith  to  guide  his  destiny. 

Happily  the  world  does  not  lack  its  object  lessons 
proving  national  control  of  population  feasible.  For 
a  considerable  time  previous  to  the  present  war  the 
population  of  France  had  grown  so  slowly  as  to  be 
regarded  as  virtually  static.  The  fact  has  been  cited 
by  many  as  a  proof  not  of  French  intelligence  and 
national  self-sufficiency  but  of  degeneracy — on  the 
analogy,  doubtless,  that  the  fertile  guinea  pig  is  in 
some  mysterious  way  superior  to  the  less  procreant 
elephant.  The  correspondence  of  population  in 
France  to  the  means  of  economic  support  is  a  demon- 
stration not  of  degeneracy — and  we  hardly  needed 
the  heroic  proofs  France  has  offered  in  the  war  to 
convince  us  of  her  vitality — but  ef  her  wisdom,  her 
self-control,  her  concern  for  the  true  welfare  of  her 
people.  She  is  one  nation  that  proves  colonies  and 
imperial  growth  unnecessary  and  unintelligent.  In 
Holland,  likewise,  we  find  an  analogous  situation, 
knowledge  of  the  means  to  birth  control  and  its  prac- 
tice being  encouraged  by  the  government. 

Sooner  or  later  the  world  must  follow  the  examples 
of  France  and  Holland  if  human  existence  is  to  re- 
main tolerable  to  highly  intelligent  and  moral  beings. 
The  time  may  be  postponed  if  our  ethical  code  per- 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  65 

mits  a  continuance  of  the  world-old  practice  of  de- 
stroying the  weaker  races  and  seizing  their  lands.  It 
is  even  remote  if  intelligent  effort  is  put  forth  to  re- 
claim and  colonize  the  subarctic  regions,  the  tropical 
jungles,  and  the  deserts,  all  of  which  may  be  made 
habitable  by  the  exercise  of  international  co-operation 
and  scientific  knowledge.  Ultimately,  however,  the 
necessity  of  a  static  population  the  world  over  must 
be  met;  and  in  China,  Germany,  England,  and  other 
densely  populated  areas  it  should  be  met  now  if  ur- 
gent social  problems  are  to  be  solved  and  if  interna- 
tional relations  are  to  rise  to  a  plane  above  that  of 
feudalism  or  tribal  warfare. 

In  the  settlement  of  the  issues  raised  by  this  war 
the  problem  of  population  has  immediately  to  do 
with  the  disposition  of  colonies  inhabited  chiefly  by 
the  black,  yellow,  and  brown  races.  Is  the  world  to 
continue  its  policy  of  seizure  and  extermination — 
deliberate  or  involuntary — or  are  the  subject  peoples, 
in  the  light  of  a  higher  morality,  to  be  considered  as 
wards  of  an  international  court,  and  their  continuance 
and  welfare  looked  after?  Ethnologists  assure  us 
that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  inferior  people,  eth- 
nologically  speaking,  and  that  though  they  differ 
widely  at  present  in  degree  of  culture  and  civilization, 
the  intellectual  potentialities  of  brown,  white,  and  yel- 
low men  are  the  same.  Some  doubt  is  cast  upon  the 
black  man's  claim  to  equal  standing;  but  it  is  at  most 


66        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

only  a  doubt,  and  largely  weakened  by  the  evidences 
of  the  negro's  intellectual  and  moral  development  un- 
der favourable  conditions. 

We  must,  then,  regard  the  peoples  of  the  earth  as 
equal  in  their  possibilities  if  not  in  their  present  at- 
tainments. They  have,  moreover,  their  individual 
contributions  to  make  to  the  world's  morality,  philos- 
ophy, and  art.  If  our  scientific  achievements  con- 
tribute to  the  welfare  and  culture  of  the  Japanese  and 
Chinese,  no  less  have  their  art,  religion,  and  philos- 
ophy already  enriched  European  thought  and  cul- 
ture. In  our  arrogance,  we  of  the  white  race,  because 
of  our  greater  fierceness  which  has  enabled  us  to  con- 
quer a  large  part  of  the  earth,  assume  our  superiority 
to  all  other  races.  We  should  not  forget  that  the  edu- 
cated Chinese  and  Japanese  look  with  contempt  upon 
our  material  philosophy  and  our  lust  for  power. 
They  see  in  our  fierce  pale  eyes  and  sharp  noses  a 
likeness  to  the  birds  of  prey  with  "beaks  that  rend 
and  tear."  Are  they  not  justified  in  their  contempt? 

The  higher  international  morality  demands,  then, 
in  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  colonies,  that  we 
consider  the  preferences  and  prejudices  of  those  gov- 
erned. If  we  exclude  the  Chinese  coolie  from  our 
shores,  it  is  only  just  that  the  Chinese  exclude  Ameri- 
can capital  and  commercial  adventurers  if  they  find  it 
to  their  interest  to  do  so.  If  democracy  implies 
equality  and  is  to  hold  among  nations  as  among  indi- 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  67 

viduals,  there  cannot  be  two  laws,  one  for  the  white 
race  and  another  for  the  rest  of  the  world.  And  in 
the  international  council  which  is,  we  hope,  to  initiate 
joint  control  of  international  problems,  preserve  the 
peace,  and  keep  open  the  avenues  of  trade,  the  voice 
of  other  nations  should  be  as  potent  as  our  own. 
Democracy  among  the  peoples  of  the  world,  as  among 
individuals,  demands  the  surrender  of  privilege  born 
of  blood,  or  tradition,  or  might.  The  world  can  never 
achieve  a  genuine  democracy  until  the  white  race 
drop  all  pretence  to  superiority  and  a  divine  right 
to  rule.  If  they  demonstrate  their  superiority,  mental, 
moral,  or  spiritual,  the  leadership  of  the  world  will 
be  theirs  even  under  conditions  which  inhibit  physical 
domination.  If  they  fail  to  demonstrate  their  supe- 
riority, the  leadership  of  the  world  will  pass  to  those 
races  more  deserving  of  it. 

The  League  to  Enforce  Peace,  as  the  first  of  the 
international  institutions  to  take  over  the  government 
of  the  world,  should,  then,  both  for  political  expe- 
diency and  as  a  proof  of  its  moral  right  to  the  func- 
tion it  assumes,  reassure  the  little  peoples  and  the 
subject  races  that  they  are  truly  wards  of  the  court 
and  that  their  welfare  is  the  concern  of  the  Powers. 
They  should  be  assured  of  the  right  to  self-govern- 
ment, freedom  from  aggression,  and  aided  to  develop 
the  culture  and  civilization  peculiar  to  them.  India, 
Poland,  Servia,  Belgium  and  the  rest,  without  the  Alps 


68        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

and  a  citizenry  trained  to  the  use  of  arms,  would  then 
take  such  a  place  as  Switzerland  now  holds  among  the 
nations,  independent  and  respected. 

But  this  political  freedom  and  the  right  of  self-gov- 
ernment are  not  enough.  Economic  freedom  is  more 
vital  than  autonomy.  A  free  Servia  denied  a  sea- 
port or  with  the  markets  of  Austria  closed  to  her 
would  not  be  truly  free,  free,  that  is,  to  prosper  and 
develop  a  complex  domestic  economy.  Tariff  bar- 
riers are  as  effective  as  arms  in  keeping  the  weaker 
peoples  in  subjection.  The  danger,  at  the  conclusion 
of  the  war,  is  not  so  much  that  political  tyranny  will 
continue  and  grow — for  the  costliness  and  futility  of 
it  will  be  fresh  in  all  men's  minds — but  that  the  na- 
tions will  endeavour  to  recoup  their  losses  by  profit- 
able trade  alliances  and  the  exploitation  of  weaker 
peoples.  China,  especially,  with  her  vast  resources 
and  cheap  labour,  invites  aggression.  Japan,  nearest 
of  the  great  powers,  is  seizing  her  opportunity  to  pre- 
empt economic  privileges  in  China,  but  once  the  war  is 
over  other  powers  will  attempt  to  gain  their  share. 
Japanese  aggression  like  German  aggression  must 
give  way  before  a  wiser  and  more  righteous  interna- 
tional morality  and  China  be  helped  to  stand  on  her 
own  feet  and  realize  her  destiny. 

Nor  will  it  be  either  just  or  politic  to  discriminate 
against  Germany  and  make  her  the  victim  of  trade 
wars.  To  do  so  would  be  dangerous,  for  Germany 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  69 

so  abused  would  prepare  herself  for  future  wars;  the 
hatred,  which  will  be  the  heritage  of  this  war,  would 
not  be  permitted  to  die.  Moreover,  the  world,  in  any 
such  trade  alliance  excluding  the  importation  of  Ger- 
man products,  would  lose  the  great  benefit  of  German 
skill  and  technical  efficiency  in  the  manufacturing 
arts.  And  these  are  amongst  the  assets  of  the  world 
from  which  all  peoples  should  profit.  Freedom  to 
pursue  the  arts  of  peace  and  to  exchange  commodities 
no  less  than  ideas  must  be  the  basis  of  any  interna- 
tional union  which  is  to  endure  and  not  be  periodically 
subject  to  the  menace  of  war. 

That  all  tariff  barriers  the  world  over  should  be  at 
one  stroke  removed  is  doubtless  impracticable  under 
existing  conditions.  Populations  and  industries  are 
now  artificially  distributed,  not  to  the  ultimate  eco- 
nomic welfare  of  the  world  as  a  whole  but  in  accord- 
ance with  a  multitude  of  factors  which  are  the  product 
of  chance  and  calculation:  of  artificial  restrictions 
and  stimuli,  of  subsidies  and  discriminating  tariffs, 
of  technical  education  and  efficiency,  of  varying  stand- 
ards of  living,  and  of  racial  animosities  and  hostile 
alliances.  It  would  not  be  easy  to  turn  at  once  to  a 
freer  and  saner  economic  order,  one  in  which  indus- 
trial development  is  fostered  in  strict  response  to  the 
needs  of  a  particular  population,  or  the  industrial 
workers  of  the  world  are  so  distributed  as  best  to  meet 
the  needs  of  the  world  as  a  whole.  To  remove  all 


70       THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

tariffs  would  be  to  repeat  the  industrial  confusion 
subsequent  upon  the  introduction  of  power  machinery 
in  the  north  of  England  at  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Fundamental  changes  of  this  sort 
must  needs  be  made  slowly  and  in  accordance  with 
some  international  plan.  A  plan  so  comprehensive 
demands  a  more  closely  knit  international  organiza- 
tion than  we  can  hope  for  in  the  immediate  future. 
Yet  it  would  be  but  a  logical  outgrowth  of  the  League 
to  Enforce  Peace.  It  and  the  power  to  enforce  it 
must  ultimately  come  if  the  world  is  to  know  the  final 
destruction  of  national  rivalries.  Such  a  develop- 
ment demands,  however,  the  internal  reorganization 
of  the  chief  industrial  nations,  and  of  this  I  shall  have 
more  to  say  in  the  next  chapter. 

A  single  instance  of  the  difficulty  to  be  encountered 
in  the  removal  of  tariff  barriers  and  the  reorganiza- 
tion of  industry  upon  a  world  basis  is  manifest  in  the 
differing  standards  of  living  which  prevail  among  the 
various  peoples.  If  those  peoples  among  whom  a  low 
standard  of  living  now  prevails  were  permitted  to 
flood  the  world  with  the  products  of  their  factories, 
as  would  be  the  case  were  tariffs  removed  and  the 
present  unregulated  system  of  capitalistic  production 
allowed  to  continue,  China,  Japan,  and  India  might 
rapidly  become  the  manufacturing  centres  of  the 
world.  The  industrial  populations  of  the  United 
States  and  Germany,  which  have  lived  upon  protected 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  71 

industries,  would  then,  to  a  great  extent,  be  thrown 
out  of  employment.  England,  a  free-trading  nation, 
would  be  in  better  case,  though  under  these  condi- 
tions the  standard  of  living  of  her  industrial  workers, 
already  too  low,  could  hardly  be  improved.  Eco- 
nomic freedom  the  world  over,  with  its  incalculable 
benefits  in  reducing  the  cost  of  commodities  to  all, 
demands  for  its  realization  that  standards  of  living 
be  virtually  uniform  throughout  the  world. 

The  cost  of  transporting  goods  from  countries  so 
remote  as  Japan  modifies  somewhat  the  necessity  of 
equalizing  the  standards  of  living  of  Oriental  and  Oc- 
cidental countries  but  does  not  materially  affect  the 
problem.  The  question  of  "dumping,"  whereby  goods 
are  sold  cheaper  abroad  than  at  home — a  fruitful 
cause  of  international  friction  as  has  been  pointed  out 
by  economists — is  a  further  complication.  But  this, 
too,  like  the  standard  of  living  is  only  in  part  an 
international  question.  It  has  to  do  chiefly  with  the 
industrial  organization  of  the  individual  nations  and 
must  be  considered  in  that  place.  Only  as  the  cap- 
italistic system  within  the  various  countries  is  so  mod- 
ified as  to  permit  a  rising  standard  of  living  among 
the  workers,  and  a  uniform  standard  the  world  over, 
can  the  international  problems  of  world  production 
for  world  consumption  be  satisfactorily  solved.  We 
can  premise  at  this  point  of  the  discussion  only  this: 
that  wherever  possible  without  too  great  dislocation 


72       THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

of  industry,  present  tariff  barriers  should  be  lowered 
or  removed.  And  by  no  fatal  selfishness  should  ad- 
ditional barriers  be  erected  at  this  time  to  put  further 
checks  upon  the  free  intercourse  of  peoples. 

§6 

This  discussion  of  the  economic  implications  of  a 
world  democracy  in  its  international  aspects  has  prob- 
ably been  carried  to  a  point  sufficiently  removed  from 
immediate  issues,  those  of  the  impending  peace. 
There  is  enough  of  a  program  here  to  command  the 
statesmanship,  the  clear  thinking,  and  the  unselfish- 
ness of  nations  for  a  long  time  to  come.  That  much 
or  all  of  it  should  ever  be  realized  requires  that  di- 
plomacy such  as  we  have  known  in  the  past  be  de- 
stroyed root  and  branch.  Diplomacy  has  hitherto 
been  an  inhuman  game  played  by  nations  each  desir- 
ous of  territorial  or  trade  advantage  at  the  expense 
of  others.  It  is  a  survival  of  days  which  the  morality 
of  mankind  has  outgrown.  It  is  secret  and  selfish. 
It  does  not  spring  from  the  formulated  will  of  the 
peoples  it  is  supposed  to  represent.  In  many  na- 
tions it  is  the  prerogative  of  a  wealthy  ruling  class 
careless  of  war  for  which  the  people  pay  if  thereby  a 
small  class  may  profit.  For  though  to  a  nation  such 
a  war  as  the  present  costs  more  than  a  hundred  years 
of  foreign  trade  can  repay,  it  may  be  both  immedi- 
ately and  ultimately  profitable  to  a  small  class  within 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  73 

the  nation.  The  maintenance  of  peace  demands  that 
those  who  bear  the  cost  of  war  have  the  decisive  voice 
in  international  affairs.  Only  as  the  masses  of  the 
workers  control  their  relations  with  kindred  masses 
in  other  nations  can  the  ideals  common  to  all  humanity 
find  expression.  War  will  not  certainly  cease  even 
then,  but  that  is  the  road  of  hope. 

The  immediate  duty  of  the  citizen  desirous  of  influ- 
encing even  so  little  as  he  can  the  formulation  of 
peace  terms  which  will  make  for  international  justice 
and  the  growth  of  the  democratic  ideal,  is  to  exact 
of  his  government  the  acceptance  of  the  following 
principles : 

1.  That  diplomacy  should  be  open  and  not  secret. 
The  workers,  as  those  most  vitally  concerned,  should 
have  a  determining  voice  in  questions  involving  war 
and  international  economic  policy. 

2.  That  autonomy  be  granted  those  peoples  suf- 
ficiently homogeneous  and  advanced  to  give  promise 
of  managing  their  affairs  with  a  fair  degree  of  suc- 
cess. 

3.  That  weak  or  subject  peoples,  whether  now  nom- 
inally independent  or  governed  as  colonies,  be  prom- 
ised ultimate  autonomy;  when,  that  is  to  say,  they  give 
strong  evidence  of  their  capacity  therefor.     Mean- 
while that  they  be  assured  of  protection  against  the 
aggression  of  stronger  states,  both  military  and  eco- 
nomic. 


74        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

4.  That  a  league  to  enforce  peace  be  established, 
its  objects  to  insure  the  freedom  of  the  seas,  interna- 
tionally policed,  the  limitation  of  armaments,  and  the 
substitution  of  enforced  arbitration  for  an  appeal  to 
arms  in  all  questions  of  dispute  between  the  contract- 
ing nations. 

5.  That  the  large  nations  agree  to  refrain  from 
exploiting  the  weaker  peoples  to  their  own  advantage. 
That  they  open  up  trade  routes  accessible  to  all  na- 
tions.    That  they  give  every  inland  nation  access  to 
the  sea  and  if  possible  a  port  on  ice-free  water.     That 
they  refrain  from  trade  alliances  and  international 
agreements  designed  to  profit  a  few  nations  at  the 
expense  of  others.     That  they  offer  Germany  and 
Austria  an  equal  place  with  others  in  the  community 
of  nations  upon  evidence  that  these  two  have  re- 
nounced imperial  and  militaristic  ambitions. 

It  is  the  realization  of  some  such  program  as  this 
that  must  be  the  declared  object  of  all  the  Allies,  not 
of  one  or  two,  only,  nor  of  a  minority  group,  if  out  of 
the  tragic  misery  and  destruction  of  this  war  some 
little  good  may  come.  Unless  the  world,  with  quick- 
ened conscience,  with  magnanimity  for  the  van- 
quished, and  with  greater  unselfishness  than  nations 
have  ever  before  displayed,  improves  this  opportunity 
to  establish  a  better  purpose  and  understanding  among 
the  nations,  the  sacrifices  of  the  young,  the  strong,  of 
those  with  ideals  and  the  courage  to  die  for  them,  will 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  75 

have  been  in  vain.  It  remains  for  the  world  in  the 
coming  peace  and  thereafter  to  demonstrate  that  ideal- 
ism and  the  hope  of  a  true  democracy  did  not  perish 
with  the  young  men  upon  the  battlefields  of  France. 


Ill 

THE    CITIZEN   AND    THE    STATE 

IF  the  participation  of  the  United  States  in  the  pres- 
ent war  proves  long  and  costly,  the  administrative 
reorganization  of  our  government  necessary  to  meet 
the  demands  for  food  and  munitions  will  revolution- 
ize industry  in  its  relation  to  political  machinery. 
Even  if  our  participation  is  neither  long  nor  costly 
it  must  have  considerable  influence  upon  our  future 
industrial  and  political  methods,  for  we  shall  learn 
not  only  from  it  but  also  from  the  wider  experience 
of  England  and  France,  our  allies.  Neither  of  these 
nations  can  return  to  the  loose  relationship  of  govern- 
ment to  industry  that  prevailed  prior  to  the  war. 
Democratic  theory,  with  its  insistence  upon  individual 
rights,  has  hitherto  minimized  the  function  of  the 
state.  Only  grudgingly  and  in  the  stress  of  war  has 
it  yielded  to  governmental  interference  in  industrial 
relations  to  prevent  conflicts  between  capital  and 
labour,  to  control  food  prices,  and  to  establish  proper 
relations  between  landlord  and  tenant.  In  the  sev- 
enty-five years  preceding,  the  long  struggle  in  the 
English  parliament  for  factory  legislation  regulating 

76 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE         77 

hours,  conditions  of  work,  the  employment  of  women 
and  children,  and  similar  problems  bears  witness  to 
the  slow  yielding  of  the  laissez  fairs  principle  to  the 
necessities  of  industrial  change  under  modern  condi- 
tions of  life. 

The  war  has  accelerated  the  inevitable  change. 
Factory  workers  have  been  mobilized  no  less  than  sol- 
diers; hours,  pay,  and  working  conditions  have  passed 
under  governmental  control;  war-time  profits  have 
been  appropriated  by  the  state;  food  prices  and  the 
distribution  of  foods  are  determined  by  administra- 
tive officers.  Necessity  has  forced  these  innovations. 
In  no  other  way  has  it  been  possible  to  combat  effec- 
tively the  efficient  autocracy  of  Germany.  And  the 
lessons  in  co-operation  so  taught,  the  realization  that 
the  lives  and  wealth  of  its  citizens  are  at  the  disposal 
of  the  state  for  the  welfare  of  all,  will  not  be  for- 
gotten with  the  return  of  peace.  It  will  be  impossible 
to  return  to  the  old  unregulated  competitive  con- 
ditions. It  seems  incredible  that  food  supplies 
should  ever  again  be  controlled  by  speculators,  or 
the  necessaries  of  life  made  the  basis  of  monopoly 
profits. 

The  war  will  have  taught  the  democratic  states  the 
necessity  of  a  strong  central  government  which  shall 
control  the  domestic  economy  of  its  people.  A  di- 
vorce of  political  and  economic  functions  will  be 
recognized  as  no  longer  practicable,  for  it  is  costly 


78        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

and  wasteful,  and  permits  a  lowering  of  the  efficiency 
of  the  workers.  In  a  time  of  national  danger  it  is 
suicidal,  demanding  a  rapid  and  necessarily  awkward 
reorganization  of  the  state's  administrative  machin- 
ery. A  return  to  the  conditions  that  prevailed  prior 
to  the  war  will  be  impossible  either  in  England  or 
France.  It  will  not  be  wholly  possible  in  the  United 
States.  In  our  own  country  no  less  than  abroad  we 
may  expect  a  growth  in  the  powers  of  the  government, 
a  closer  co-ordination  of  political  and  economic  func- 
tions. But  the  nature  of  that  government,  whether 
more  or  less  democratic  than  it  has  been  hitherto,  we 
must  determine. 

For  it  is  quite  an  unwarranted  assumption  that  this 
war,  fought  ostensibly  in  the  cause  of  democracy,  will 
result  in  greater  domestic  liberty  for  the  victors. 
German  militarism  and  autocracy  may  be  crushed, 
for  their  menace  is  clear,  while  within  our  own  bor- 
ders the  autocracy  we  know  may  in  nowise  be  weak- 
ened, may  even  be  strengthened.  We  do  not  fear 
sufficiently  that  the  forces  of  autocracy  may  learn 
their  lessons  from  the  war  and  with  a  realization  of 
the  increased  power  and  profit  possible  under  a  highly 
centralized  system  of  economic  control  seek  to  utilize 
the  improved  machinery  of  government  for  the  fur- 
therance of  their  own  ends.  War,  with  its  irksome 
burdens  for  the  many,  always  profits  a  few  despite 
taxes  and  supertaxes.  Vast  businesses  will  be  built 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE         79 

up  by  the  war  and  others  strengthened.  Upon  the 
return  of  peace,  the  industries  so  organized  will 
be  diverted  to  the  conquest  of  the  nation's  markets. 
If  industrial  conditions  are  henceforth  to  be  increas- 
ingly subject  to  governmental  control  it  will  be  the 
object  of  big  business  to  be  the  determining  power  in 
that  control. 

The  history  of  democracy  in  the  United  States 
makes  the  truth  of  this  prediction  selfevident.  De- 
mocracy with  us  has  been  an  ideal  too  often  illusory, 
too  seldom  a  reality  even  in  its  narrowest  political 
sense.  The  framers  of  the  Constitution,  despite  their 
pious  generalizations  about  liberty,  equality,  and  fra- 
ternity, distrusted  the  people.  The  central  govern- 
ment, checked  in  its  grasp  by  reason  of  the  power 
granted  the  individual  states ;  Congress,  the  President, 
the  Supreme  Court  with  each  its  check  upon  the 
others;  and  the  representative  system  itself  with  its 
indirect  method  of  electing  senators  and  the  Presi- 
dent; and  most  of  all  the  rigid  amending  clause  of 
the  Constitution — all  these  restrictions  are  evidences 
of  the  distrust  in  which  the  minority  who  framed  the 
Constitution  held  the  common  people.  Their  aim 
was  to  establish  a  republic,  not  a  democracy. 

Since  1789  American  history  has  been  one  long 
struggle  between  two  forces:  the  one  conservative, 
aristocratic  in  its  sympathies,  and  economically  pow- 
erful, seeking  to  maintain  our  institutions  as  they 


80        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

were  established;  the  other,  democratic,  radical,  and 
economically  dependent,  seeking  to  make  our  political 
institutions  more  representative  of  the  will  of  the  peo- 
ple, to  weaken  the  selfish  influence  of  wealth  and 
privilege  upon  Congress  in  its  creation  of  laws,  the 
President  in  their  execution,  and  the  Supreme  Court 
in  their  interpretation.  Much  of  this  effort  we  now 
see  to  have  been  misdirected,  for  the  people,  distrust- 
ful of  a  government  which  was  not  directly  responsive 
to  their  interests,  sought  not  to  make  it  both  more 
powerful  and  more  responsible  but  to  restrict  its  func- 
tions, jealously  clinging  to  state  prerogatives  which, 
with  the  development  of  nation-wide  business,  proved 
of  little  genuine  worth.  To  their  bewilderment  they 
learned  soon  that  the  possession  of  a  vote  was  no 
guarantee  of  popular  government.  The  party  system, 
the  boss,  the  use  of  wealth  to  determine  elections,  and 
not  least  the  subsidizing  of  the  legal  profession  by 
the  landed  and  industrial  interests — predicted  by  De 
Tocqueville — all  these  went  far  to  make  the  freeman 
possessed  of  a  vote  politically  impotent  save  as,  in 
national  crises,  an  outraged  public  opinion  overrode 
for  a  brief  period  the  professional  politician. 

Democracy  has  undoubtedly  won  its  occasional  vic- 
tories, but  our  political  experiences  have  also  made 
many  of  us  cynical  of  popular  government.  Thou- 
sands of  Americans  will  not  vote  because  to  do  so  they 
regard  as  a  waste  of  time;  they  say  of  every  public 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE         81 

man,  however  patriotic,  that  he  has  been  bought,  that 
all  politicians  and  all  parties  are  tarred  with  the  same 
brush.  We  are  so  distrustful  of  our  representatives 
in  Congress  that  we  regard  them  mostly  as  a  joke,  and 
few  highly  intelligent  men  of  independent  mind  would 
take  a  seat  in  Congress  were  it  offered  them.  And 
withal  we  wonder  by  what  dispensation  of  Providence 
we  have  had,  on  the  whole,  such  able  presidents,  who 
have  contrived  to  force  an  incompetent,  indolent,  and 
often  corrupt  Congress  to  something  resembling  effi- 
cient legislation. 

The  force  that  has  retarded  the  progress  of  democ- 
racy has  been  commingled  of  privilege,  wealth,  and 
honest  conservatism,  good  and  bad  alike  taking  ad- 
vantage of  the  defects  in  our  political  machinery 
and  the  existence  of  a  class  of  professional  poli- 
ticians recruited  mainly  from  the  law,  to  thwart  the 
popular  will  desirous  of  making  political  institutions 
minister  to  the  economic  wellbeing  of  the  masses. 
Often  this  popular  will  has  not  been  articulate,  has 
not  known  the  cause  of  the  economic  burdens  which 
it  has  borne.  The  educated  and  monied  classes  have 
profited  from  this  fact  and  failed  to  make  clear  the 
needs  of  those  less  fortunate  or  less  intelligent  than 
themselves.  For  this  is  the  obligation  of  privilege 
and  intelligence  in  a  democracy  no  less  than  in  any 
other  form  of  government.  No  democracy  that  has 
been  or  ever  will  be  can  make  men  equal  in  intelli- 


82        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

gence.  There  must  always  be  intellectual  leaders  to 
interpret  the  needs  of  the  many  in  order  that  those 
needs  may  be  satisfied.  Whenever  the  favoured 
classes  slight  this  duty  of  leading  and  interpreting, 
then  will  the  government  inevitably  more  truly  repre- 
sent the  desire  of  the  few  than  the  needs  of  the  masses. 
This  has  too  largely  been  the  case  in  the  United 
States  since  our  establishment  as  a  nation,  nor  do 
we  differ  therein  from  other  pseudo-democratic  peo- 
ples. The  disproportionate  influence  upon  legisla- 
tion exerted  by  propertied  interests  is  no  phenomenon 
peculiar  to  our  day.  But  the  recognition  of  the  fact 
and  its  bearing  upon  the  social  problems  of  a  nation 
rapidly  transformed  from  an  agricultural  to  a  com- 
plex industrial  state  is  recent.  Property  interests 
are  also  larger  and  more  powerful  than  once,  more 
conscious  of  their  common  purpose,  more  aware  of 
the  growing  definiteness  of  the  demands  put  upon 
them  by  the  working  classes,  demands  which  prop- 
erty regards  as  inimical  to  its  welfare.  Commercial 
and  manufacturers'  associations  are  organized  to  op- 
pose organized  labour  and  national  regulation  of  in- 
dustry. The  contest,  if  no  different  essentially  from 
what  it  once  was,  is  now  sharper  and  intellectually 
more  selfaware.  That  government  will  increasingly 
occupy  itself  with  the  regulation  of  industry  is  ap- 
parent. Hence  the  concern  of  the  vested  interests  to 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE         83 

make  that  interference  innocuous  to  those  already  in 
the  saddle. 

Yet  to  many  good  Americans,  such  a  belief  as  I 
have  expressed  will  seem  wildly  exaggerated  if  not 
downright  untrue.  It  is  yet  a  common  belief  that 
ours  is  a  land  of  boundless  opportunity,  that  with  ax 
and  gun  and  plough  and  oxen  one  may  yet  go  into  the 
wilderness  and  become  independent.  The  wilderness 
has  gone  save  as  a  place  for  recreation;  there  is  no 
longer  a  frontier.  The  new  lands  to  come  under  cul- 
tivation are  reclaimed  by  irrigation  and  drainage,  the 
old  lands  restored  through  the  use  of  fertilizers  and 
the  application  of  scientific  agricultural  methods — 
requiring,  that  is  to  say,  some  capital  and  consider- 
able education.  My  grandfather  in  1840  bought  gov- 
ernment land  in  Illinois  at  one  dollar  and  a  quarter 
an  acre,  land  that  sells  now  for  two  hundred  dollars. 
He  gave  his  hired  men  a  quarter  section  after  a  term 
of  service  and  their  descendants  are  substantial  citi- 
zens today. 

The  intelligent  young  men  who  have  been  pouring 
into  this  country  from  Russia  during  the  last  fifteen 
years  have  not  found  our  land  to  be  what  we  like  to 
think  it.  Nor  do  they  see  it  through  such  rosy  spec- 
tacles as  those  of  Mary  Antin  in  her  "Promised  Land." 
For  one  highly  intelligent  Russian  boy  writes  that, 
contriving  through  vast  hardship  to  come  to  America, 


84        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

the  land  of  opportunity,  to  secure  an  education  de- 
nied him  in  Russia,  he  found  that  "opportunity  is  not 
for  the  immigrant.  Instead  of  the  university  I  faced 
the  sweatshop."  Then  for  him  followed  years  of  toil 
by  day  in  order  that  he  might  go  to  night  school.  Ul- 
timately he  attained  his  ambition  and  came  to  college, 
granted,  and  with  an  appreciation  of  its  opportunities 
such  as  few  native-born  Americans  possess.  Granted, 
too,  that  America,  compared  with  the  Russia  of  the 
old  regime,  knows  no  racial  or  caste  distinctions. 
There  is  still,  however,  little  of  that  equality  of  oppor- 
tunity upon  which  we  pride  ourselves.  Only  the 
fittest  survive,  those  with  the  strongest  nerves  and 
bodies.  The  weaker,  no  less  ambitious  perhaps,  fill 
the  consumptive  wards  of  our  hospitals  or  remain,  of 
necessity,  in  sweatshop  and  factory. 

For  men  of  genius  or  of  financial  and  administra- 
tive talent  opportunity  for  advancement  exists  in  all 
countries.  Aristocracy  renews  its  strength  from 
these  in  Germany,  in  Russia,  and  in  England.  In 
England,  where  caste  and  property  are  more  powerful 
than  in  America,  a  man  may  yet  win  a  peerage  by 
brewing  beer,  exploiting  the  possibilities  of  "yellow 
journalism,"  or  attaining  a  success  in  politics  or  by 
his  pen.  For  the  exceptional  man  there  is  oppor- 
tunity under  any  conditions  of  life.  But  this  is  a  far 
different  thing  from  opportunity  for  those  of  mediocre 
talents  who  must  constitute  the  vast  majority  of  every 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE         85 

nation.  If  democracy  is  to  mean  opportunity  for 
every  one  we  must  revise  our  conception  of  it  to  mean 
this:  that  every  man,  easily  and  freely  have  access  to 
that  place  in  the  world  which  he  is  best  fitted  to  fill; 
and  that  in  this  place  he  be  given  the  means  to  main- 
tain himself  and  his  family  in  comfort  and  with  op- 
portunity for  wholesome  recreation  and  the  realiza- 
tion of  his  best  mental  and  spiritual  possibilities. 
Democracy  has  never  meant  so  much  as  this  in  any 
land  or  time,  in  our  own  favoured  land  little  more 
than  another. 

Equality  of  opportunity  in  the  sense  in  which  we 
usually  employ  the  term  would  mean,  if  it  meant 
anything,  that  we  should  all  be  well  born,  inheriting 
strong  bodies  free  from  defect;  that  we  should  be  well 
nourished;  that  we  should  be  equally  well  educated. 
But  were  all  these  conditions  realized  there  would 
still  be,  in  a  competitive  society,  room  at  the  top  for 
a  few  only.  Some  must  serve  and  do  the  manual 
toil  of  the  world.  And  we  have  either  to  accept,  for 
the  mass,  a  condition  of  servitude  such  as  exists  or 
so  to  revise  our  industrial  system  that  those  who  toil 
may  enjoy  some  of  the  material  benefits  which  are 
now  monopolized  by  the  few.  If  we  permit  present 
conditions  to  continue  in  a  more  highly  centralized 
industrial  state  such  as  impends,  with  a  society  more 
firmly  stratified  than  now,  let  us  not  call  our  system 
a  democracy.  Equality  at  the  polls  will  mean  little 


86        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

without  a  genuine  equality  of  influence  in  the  man- 
agement of  our  institutions,  industrial  no  less  than 
political. 

We  shall  assume,  then,  that  democracy  connotes 
equality  and  freedom,  economic  no  less  than  political, 
and  it  may  be  well  to  point  out  more  specifically 
wherein  even  political  democracy,  in  the  narrow 
sense,  is  impossible  unless  based  upon  economic  se- 
curity. Intimidation  of  voters  whose  jobs  and  wages 
are  dependent  upon  the  will  of  their  employers  is 
probably  not  extensive,  for  our  system  of  the  secret 
ballot  makes  it  uncertain.  But  there  are  more  effi- 
cacious methods.  The  threat  that  the  factory  will 
close  its  doors  if  this  or  another  candidate  is  elected 
or  if  the  free  traders  get  into  power  and  lower  the 
tariff,  is  intimidation  also.  The  workers  should  not, 
of  course,  be  deceived,  should  not  be  coerced  by  lies 
and  economic  fallacies*  But  the  fact  remains  that 
they  are  so  coerced  and,  even  if  suspecting  motives  and 
arguments,  lean  to  the  safe  side,  fearful  of  hazarding 
their  jobs  and  wages.  Economic  questions  are  diffi- 
cult at  best,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  workers  yield 
to  the  influence  of  those  in  a  position  to  harm  them. 
But  are  such  in  command  of  a  free  vote?  Obviously 
not.  They  are  driven  to  the  polls,  as  to  their  daily 
tasks,  by  a  complex  of  influences  over  which  they  have 
no  control  and  of  which  they  have  no  clear  understand- 
ing. Their  votes  are  not  free  nor  are  they  of  equal 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE         87 

weight  to  the  votes  of  the  intelligent  and  independent 
citizens  who  select  their  candidates  and  measures  un- 
influenced by  economic  pressure.  Political  freedom 
demands  an  economic  independence  that  is  safe  from 
influence  and  intimidation;  which  is  intelligent  by 
reason  of  adequate  education  and  opportunity  for 
thought;  which  is  open  to  intelligent  guidance  from 
disinterested  sources.  In  this  sense,  political  free- 
dom is  rare. 

It  need  scarcely  be  pointed  out  that,  despite  our 
democratic  theories,  men  are  unequal  before  the  law. 
The  law  is  on  the  side  of  him  who  can  secure  the  most 
expert  counsel  to  plead  his  case,  and  skilled  lawyers 
command  large  fees.  Moreover,  in  civil  suits  the 
poor  man  is  less  able  to  pay  the  price  of  the  law's 
delays;  his  means  and  patience  are  worn  out  before 
those  of  his  wealthier  adversary  and  he  has  the  choice 
of  dropping  his  case  or  pursuing  it  to  what,  at  best, 
can  be  only  an  empty  victory.  This  condition  of 
affairs  is  recognized  in  our  common  saying  that  "there 
is  one  law  for  the  rich  and  another  for  the  poor." 
The  legal  aid  societies  established  to  assist  the  poor 
in  securing  justice,  and  the  movement  for  the  reform 
of  our  legal  procedure  all  bear  witness  to  the  inequal- 
ities which  exist.  Yet  democracy  must  mean  that  the 
law  shall  be  free  to  all  and  all  on  a  basis  of  true 
equality  before  it. 

In  whatsoever  direction  we  turn  the  same  truth  is 


88        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

manifest:  that  democracy  has  little  practical  meaning 
if  political  freedom  is  divorced  from  economic  inde- 
pendence. That  complete  democracy  would  imply 
complete  economic  equality,  that  is  to  say,  equality  of 
income  is,  I  believe,  a  logical  deduction.  But  this  is 
a  consummation  sufficiently  remote  and  need  not  con- 
cern us  now.  Our  immediate  need  is  to  make  our 
country  more  democratic  than  it  now  is  in  order  that 
we  may  safely  permit  the  establishment  of  a  more 
powerful  and  highly  centralized  government  than  we 
have  hitherto  known  and  take  our  proper  place  in  a 
league  of  democratic  states.  For  democracy  at  home 
is  essential  to  international  democracy.  The  small 
nations,  the  weak  and  subject  peoples,  will  fare  ill  at 
our  hands,  if  our  democracy  is  not  economic  as  well 
as  political,  practical  as  well  as  theoretical.  We 
have,  therefore,  the  task  of  limiting  the  power  of 
wealth  individually  and  corporately  held,  devoted, 
that  is,  to  the  privilege  of  the  few  rather  than  to  the 
good  of  the  many.  And  we  have  also  to  attack  our 
problem  from  the  other  end,  to  raise  the  standard  of 
living  among  the  workers  by  fixing  a  high  minimum 
wage,  making  employment  secure,  and  insuring  them 
against  accident,  disease,  and  old  age.  In  short  we 
must  fit  them  for  the  acquisition  and  exercise  of  that 
political  power  now  fondly  but  mistakenly  attributed 
to  them. 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE         89 

§2 

That  the  growing  disparity  of  wealth  in  the  United 
States  is  not  only  harmful  to  the  rich  in  the  power 
which  it  gives  divorced  of  any  true  sense  of  social 
responsibility,  and  to  the  poor  in  the  envy  and  class 
hatred  which  it  fosters,  but  that  it  is  also  modifying 
the  very  spirit  of  Americanism,  a  slight  acquaintance 
with  our  country  will  show.  It  was  not  many  years 
ago  that  a  freeborn  white  American  scorned  a  tip. 
To  take  a  tip  would  have  been  the  admission  of  in- 
feriority, and  he  thought  himself  as  good  as  another. 
In  the  larger  cities,  in  the  lanes  of  tourist  travel,  in 
resorts  and  hotels — wherever  wealth  comes  in  con- 
tact with  service — few  men  will  now  refuse  a  tip, 
though  many  will  reserve  the  right  of  hating  those 
they  exploit.  The  chauffeur  and  the  bell-boy,  the 
barber,  the  porter,  and  the  chambermaid  all  expect 
and  demand  tips  whether  for  poor  service  or  none.  A 
tip,  if  justified  at  all,  is  only  so  on  the  theory  that  some 
special  and  efficient  service  has  been  rendered.  In 
practice  tipping  makes  all  service  bad  and  destroys 
the  spirit  of  honest  workmanship.  The  man  whose 
position  makes  a  tip  essential  to  his  livelihood,  pre- 
serves his  self-respect  by  scorning  you  and  doing  his 
work  as  negligently  as  he  dare.  It  is  the  same  spirit 
that  leads  the  workman  in  his  craft  to  give  as  little  and 
as  slovenly  work  as  he  can  and  hold  his  job. 


90        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

These  are  trivial  instances,  but  I  believe  them  sig- 
nificant of  that  change  in  the  American  spirit  which 
class  conflict  and  the  growing  disparity  in  wealth  have 
brought  about  and  are  bringing  about  increasingly. 
The  farther  one  gets  from  a  life  of  complex  industry 
and  striking  social  contrasts  the  less  of  this  servile  and 
envious  spirit  he  will  find  and  the  more  of  honest 
fellowship  and  workmanship.  In  the  country  one 
encounters  human  meanness  and  avarice  as  elsewhere 
but  also  more  of  the  spirit  of  neighbourliness  which 
gives  friendly  help  with  no  expectation  of  return. 
And  as  one  leaves  the  more  densely  settled  and  highly 
developed  middle  west  and  east  and  enters  the  thinly 
settled  west,  the  more  one  will  find  of  the  older  Amer- 
ican spirit  of  democracy,  the  na'ive  belief  that  all  men 
are  equal,  an  absurd  belief,  perhaps,  but  a  noble  one. 

Jeffersonian  democracy  with  its  assumption  of  sim- 
plicity, Jacksonian  democracy  with  its  pretence  that 
all  men  are  equally  fitted  to  hold  office,  are  crude  in 
many  ways,  are  productive  of  Congressmen  in  Stetson 
hats  logrolling  for  new  postoffices  and  military  posts 
in  the  midst  of  the  prairies.  Their  uncouthness  and 
flamboyant  patriotism  are  patent.  But  in  the  condi- 
tions which  produce  them,  in  the  electors  "back 
home,"  there  is  something  we  are  losing  in  America, 
a  belief  that  all  men  are  equal  in  the  eyes  of  God,  a 
belief  concretely  expressed  in  ways  incompatible  with 
good  government,  often  enough,  but  a  belief  which 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE         91 

produced  Lincoln.  That  spiritual  faith  America 
must  preserve  and  discipline  to  finer  uses  than  once  if 
she  is  to  become  a  great  and  a  free  nation.  A  dis- 
ciplined democracy  which  can  recognize  wise  and 
disinterested  leadership  and  be  guided  by  it  while  yet 
retaining  its  ancient  faith  that  unequal  as  men  are  in 
powers  they  are  equal  in  a  mystical  and  religious 
sense  because  equally  an  expression  of  the  spiritual 
force  that  animates  the  world — some  such  democracy 
we  seek  and  perhaps  may  attain.  It  is  because  hu- 
man souls  are  not  equally  the  concern  of  the  state  and 
because  some  have  been  completely  neglected  by  it 
that  the  spirit  of  democracy  has  faltered. 

It  may  indeed  be  that  democracy  is  incapable  of 
choosing  wise  leaders,  that  it  is  unable  to  subject  itself 
to  self-imposed  discipline,  or  to  serve  willingly  un- 
der the  guidance  of  men  of  vision.  Perhaps,  as 
Bernard  Shaw  has  suggested,  human  beings  in  the 
present  degree  of  their  development  are  not  wise 
enough  to  solve  the  difficult  problems  which  our  mod- 
ern world  presents.  But  the  only  alternatives  we  know 
are  autocracies  which  have  failed  and  autocracies 
which,  like  that  of  Germany,  have  triumphed  only  at 
the  cost  of  blood  and  servitude.  Better  that  the 
human  race  should  perish  than  that  Germany's  way 
prove  the  only  way.  And  meanwhile  we  have  the 
great  hope  that  a  democracy  which  is  based  both  on 
economic  and  political  freedom  may  ultimately  solve 


92        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

its  problems.  Such  a  democracy  has  never  existed 
on  a  scale  sufficiently  large  or  amid  a  world  suf- 
ficiently hospitable  to  it  to  permit  its  survival.  Com- 
munistic colonies  have  proved  little  save  the  existence 
of  an  unquenchable  human  desire  for  a  better  way 
of  life.  If  the  world  is  to  become  a  finer  and  freer 
habitation  for  man,  some  experiment  in  world-wide 
socialism,  communism — call  it  what  you  like,  gov- 
ernment in  which  all  participate  equally  for  the  equal 
good  of  all — must  be  attempted.  And  this  is  a  fitting 
moment  in  the  world's  history  in  which  to  inaugurate 
the  attempt. 

§3 

The  most  obvious  means  whereby  to  lessen  the  un- 
due disparity  in  wealth  which  now  prevails  is  to  con- 
tinue in  times  of  peace  the  heavy  tax  upon  large  in- 
comes which  has  been  levied  as  a  war  measure.  If 
it  is  desirable,  for  the  sake  of  principle,  that  every 
one  should  pay  a  tax,  that  on  incomes  no  more  than 
sufficient  to  maintain  a  comfortable  standard  of  living 
— which  I  should  place  at  four  or  five  thousand  dol- 
lars a  year  for  men  with  families — should  be  nominal 
only;  above  that  amount  the  tax  should  be  increas- 
ingly heavy  until  all  incomes  in  excess  of  one  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars  were  virtually  confiscated.  It 
is  a  recognized  principle  of  modern  taxation  that  the 
burden  should  fall  most  heavily  upon  those  best  able 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE         93 

to  pay.  It  should  be  increasingly  recognized  also 
that  superlatively  large  incomes  are  a  menace  to 
society  on  the  ground,  simply,  that  few  men  are  suf- 
ficiently wise  to  spend  vast  incomes  without  harm  to 
themselves  and  to  others.  One  hundred  thousand 
dollars  is  an  arbitrary  figure  but  it  seems  to  me 
sufficiently  large  more  than  to  satisfy  the  legitimate 
wants  of  any  human  being. 

Heavy  inheritance  taxes  are,  however,  a  more  vital 
need  than  a  large  income  tax.  Vast  fortunes  in- 
vested in  land,  railroads,  and  utility  corporations, 
rolling  up  through  sheer  momentum,  added  to  by 
wealthy  marriages,  and  passing  by  inheritance  under 
trust  provisions  which  safeguard  the  properties,  have 
already  created  an  aristocracy  of  wealth  in  this  coun- 
try. The  phenomenon  is  so  recent,  the  opportunities 
for  acquiring  great  wealth  so  recently  circumscribed, 
that  we  are  scarcely  yet  aware  that  we  have  a  prop- 
ertied class  no  less  firmly  established  than  that  of 
England.  It  is  our  popular  belief  that  it  requires 
but  three  generations  to  pass  "from  shirt-sleeves  to 
shirt-sleeves,"  that  wealth  accumulated  by  the  grand- 
father is  dissipated  by  the  grandsons.  This  is  but 
rarely  the  case.  Well  established  wealth  perpetuates 
itself  with  little  personal  guidance.  It  grows  with  the 
development  of  society  and  those  who  inherit  it  are 
as  secure,  as  well  able  to  found  families,  as  are  the 
landed  aristocracies  of  Europe.  Class  envy  and  class 


94        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

warfare,  so  deprecated  by  our  industrial  and  financial 
leaders,  are  created  by  the  very  solidity  of  the  for- 
tunes which  they  establish,  and  with  the  passing  of 
every  decade  the  opportunity  of  the  exceptional  few 
to  pass  from  the  lower  classes  into  the  freer  life  of 
the  wealthy — that  "democracy  of  opportunity"  upon 
which  we  pride  ourselves — is  lessened. 

The  national  confiscation  of  excessive  wealth 
through  income  and  inheritance  taxes,  is  moreover 
necessary  to  furnish  the  means  whereby  our  tremen- 
dous social  problems  may  be  met  and  solved  and  the 
standard  of  living  of  our  industrial  classes  materially 
increased.  Poverty  and  disease  are,  in  the  main, 
social  ills  springing  from  the  interplay  of  complex 
economic  forces  unregulated  by  the  state.  They 
must  be  eradicated  if  our  social  system  is  to  be- 
come healthy  and  our  citizens  competent  to  exercise 
the  privileges  of  democratic  government.  Disease 
springs  largely  from  poverty  and  ignorance,  from 
bad  housing,  malnutrition,  overcrowding,  dangerous 
and  unhealthful  conditions  of  work — evils  which  can 
be  eliminated  by  foresight  and  the  expenditure  of 
money.  The  nature  of  the  problem,  its  cause  and  its 
remedy,  is  known,  but  the  organization  of  forces  nec- 
essary to  its  solution  is  only  in  its  infancy.  It  is  a 
national  not  a  local  problem  and  must  be  met  by  a 
strong  centralized  authority  competent  to  deal  with 
it  in  all  its  manifestations  and  devoting  itself  to  that 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE         95 

end.  Such  power  demands  the  surrender  of  state  and 
municipal  prerogatives  which  are  jealously  guarded 
in  times  of  peace.  But  in  time  of  war  the  federal 
government  overrides  local  jealousies  and  conserva- 
tisms, and  the  administrative  machinery  and  powers 
so  achieved  can  be  perpetuated  and  directed  to  re- 
moter ends  if  the  citizens  have  the  wisdom  to  seize 
the  opportunity  and  profit  by  their  wartime  experi- 
ence. 

Our  social  system  presents  an  amusing  or  a  de- 
pressing spectacle  as  one  views  it  either  with  the 
eyes  of  the  mind  or  the  eyes  of  the  heart.  Its  in- 
congruities and  barbarities  shriek  at  one  from  every 
side.  To  one  awakened  to  its  absurdities,  every  daily 
contact  affords  food  for  satire.  Thus  two  incidents 
of  an  afternoon's  trip  in  the  mountains  of  North 
Carolina  seemed  to  me  typical  of  our  topsy-turvy 
civilization,  though  in  themselves  commonplace 
enough.  On  a  picturesque  mountain  road  we  passed 
a  woman,  lean,  brown,  wrinkled,  of  indeterminable 
age.  She  was  seemingly  returning  home  from  some 
illicit  "moonshine"  still,  for  as  we  passed  in  the 
motor-car  she  shrieked  in  a  drunken  raucous  voice, 
"Let  'er  fly!"  The  contrast  of  the  pleasure  seekers, 
paying  a  stiff  price  to  view  the  beauties  of  mountain 
scenery,  and  the  mountain  dweller  whose  greatest  hap- 
piness lay  in  forgetting  her  darkened  existence  in 
drunkenness,  seemed  to  me  ironic.  A  little  later  we 


96        THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

passed  a  wagon  crawling  homewards  from  town, 
drawn  by  a  yoke  of  the  little  mountain  cattle  guided 
by  a  gaunt  mountaineer.  It  was  the  same  we  had 
passed  hours  before  when  we  set  out  on  our  journey. 
Meanwhile  we  had  pleasurably  and  easily  made  a 
trip  of  forty  miles,  stopping  when  we  chose  to  view 
the  mountain  laurel  or  a  bend  of  the  mountain  stream 
dancing  in  its  canyon  bed.  Surely  the  mountaineer 
driving  to  town  with  his  load  of  wood  and  returning 
with  his  scant  purchases  should  have  driven  the  swift 
running  motor-car  while  we  crept  behind  the  slow- 
paced  oxen. 

These  are  trivial  epsiodes,  striking  one  with  their 
significance  because  of  some  strangeness  in  the  set- 
ting or  because  one  is  in  the  mood  to  see.  Our  rou- 
tine lives  in  cities  offer  more  tragic  contrasts  which 
familiarity  robs  of  their  power  to  thrill.  Children 
underfed  and  underclothed  dying  for  lack  of  care 
and  proper  food,  girls  in  the  garment  trades  earn- 
ing less  than  six  dollars  a  week,  while  in  ultra-fash- 
ionable circles  women  spend  thousands  of  dollars  in 
a  single  year  for  clothes  and  millinery,  are  instances 
of  those  extremes  which  enflame  the  anarchist  and 
provoke  class  hatred.  A  speculator  may  make  in  a 
single  turn  of  the  market  a  sum  greater  than  the  total 
earnings  of  a  competent  bank-clerk  in  a  working  life- 
time of  fifty  years.  A  man  may  "corner"  wheat  and 
from  his  fortune  endow  a  university;  may  break  a 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE         97 

strike,  secure  government  contracts  for  armour-plate, 
and  endow  libraries;  may  exploit  the  riches  of  the 
earth  in  oil-wells  and  coal-mines  and  support  a  thou- 
sand foreign  missionaries.  It  is  all  quite  as  mad  as 
the  hatter's  tea-party.  We  have  our  theories,  to  be 
sure,  that  great  rewards  are  necessary  if  we  are  to 
tempt  our  entrepreneurs  to  confer  upon  us  the  vast 
social  benefit  of  their  enterprise.  I  wonder  if  any 
one  really  believes  such  theories.  They  are  only  a 
justification  of  things  as  they  are,  an  explanation  after 
the  fact. 

The  rich,  who  profit  most  from  our  social  chaos, 
are  also  the  victims  of  it.  Self-defence  provokes 
many  a  man  in  a  financial  corner  to  ruthless  methods 
of  which  he  is  at  heart  ashamed.  And  wealth  too 
often  ruins  those  who  inherit  it,  for  in  America  there 
is  no  accompanying  heritage  of  class  obligation  and 
social  duty  which  to  some  extent  has  justified  the  ex- 
istence of  aristocracies  in  other  lands.  How,  indeed, 
an  intelligent,  well  meaning,  and  scrupulous  young 
man,  heir  to  great  wealth,  could  dispose  of  his  in- 
come without  injury  to  someone  is  more  than  I  can 
tell.  No  matter  how  good  his  intentions  he  could 
never  be  sure  that  the  help  he  gave  here  would  not 
pauperize  or  debase  elsewhere.  The  income  he 
spends  may  be  in  part  derived  from  the  very  social 
injustice  he  seeks  to  rectify.  Charity  is  useless  and 
debasing.  The  only  remedy  for  the  ills  of  our  social 


98       THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

system  is  social  action,  the  state  confiscating  wealth 
and  the  services  of  men  to  the  realization  of  a  plan 
which  deals  comprehensively  with  disease,  poverty, 
education,  crime,  and  the  standard  of  living  of  the 
entire  nation.  The  efforts  of  individuals  and  insti- 
tutions can  serve  at  best  only  to  ameliorate  the  suf- 
fering; it  cannot  get  to  the  root  of  the  disease  and 
effect  a  cure. 

These  are  truisms  which  the  thinker  and  social 
worker  have  dinned  into  the  unheeding  ears  of 
the  world  for  half  a  century.  My  excuse  for  repeat- 
ing them  here  is  that  their  relation  to  democracy 
at  home  and  to  that  international  democracy  upon 
which  the  world  pins  its  faith  and  hope  of  survival 
is  not  clear  to  everyone,  nor  the  peculiar  necessity  of 
seeing  that  relationship  at  this  particular  moment 
realized.  A  fine  idealism  is  being  generated  by  the 
world-war,  an  idealism  which  for  the  moment  out- 
weighs human  selfishness.  Men  are  giving  their  lives 
and  their  means  to  the  service  of  their  country.  Out 
of  the  stress  and  necessity  of  the  war  a  new  ma- 
chinery fitted  to  the  establishment  of  a  new  social 
order  is  coming  into  being.  To  make  use  of  this 
idealism  and  machinery  is  our  opportunity  and  duty 
as  we  endeavour  to  establish  a  better  relationship 
among  the  nations  and  destroy  the  evil  of  autocracy. 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE         99 

§  4 

Thus  far  I  have  endeavoured  to  suggest  briefly  some 
of  the  inadequacies  of  our  national  democracy,  for 
it  is  my  conviction  that  the  growth  of  a  democratic 
internationalism  must  be  accompanied  by  domestic 
reforms.  National  boundaries  do  not  express  the 
sole  lines  of  cleavage  in  our  modern  world ;  nor  even 
perhaps,  the  deepest.  Capitalism  is  not  confined  to 
a  single  state.  It  exists  in  all  countries  and  its  pur- 
pose is  everywhere  the  same:  to  exploit  the  riches  of 
the  earth  and  to  bring  men  in  subjection  to  it.  War- 
ring groups  within  the  exploiting  class  have  utilized 
race  hatreds  and  national  rivalries  to  attain  their 
ends.  In  the  present  war  we  see  German  capitalism, 
in  control  of  the  state  and  a  strong  military  organiza- 
tion, seeking  to  extend  its  sway  over  the  Balkans 
and  Asia  Minor  and  coveting  the  coal  and  iron  mines 
of  Belgium  and  northern  France.  But  it  has  suffered 
in  this  war;  less,  to  be  sure,  than  the  German  people, 
who  must  bear  the  chief  burden,  but  still  sufficiently 
to  demonstrate  that  war  is  a  costly  way  of  securing 
economic  domination.  Capital  has  suffered  through- 
out the  world  and  if  it  is  at  all  wise  it  must  have 
learned  the  lesson  that  co-operation  is  more  profitable 
than  war.  We  should,  then,  anticipate  the  fruits  of 
this  lesson  in  an  effort  of  capitalism,  upon  the  con- 
clusion of  the  war,  to  utilize  for  the  furtherance  of 


100   THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

its  own  best  interests  any  international  machinery 
which  may  be  organized.  Where  war  has  failed, 
peaceful  compromise  and  a  pooling  of  interests  may 
prove  successful.  The  American  railways  learned 
this  lesson  after  costly  efforts  to  devour  each  other. 
The  world  is  only  a  larger  America,  with  the  same 
possibilities  of  exploitation  and  profit.  Capitalism 
will  be  stupid  not  to  learn  its  lesson  and  profit  there- 
from. 

We  should,  at  the  outset,  anticipate  a  rapproche- 
ment of  the  commercial  interests  of  the  United  States 
and  Great  Britain  and  an  effort  to  adjust  their  rival- 
ries in  Mexico,  South  America,  and  China.  They 
should  aim  to  establish  an  international  shipping 
trust  for  the  control  of  the  sea.  German  capital  will 
probably  be  excluded  at  first  from  participation  in 
the  spoils.  But  German  capital  controls  vast  tech- 
nical skill,  particularly  in  the  chemical  industries, 
and  must  ultimately  be  propitiated  if  costly  warfare 
is  not  again  to  ensue.  Japan,  likewise,  is  too  power- 
ful and  occupies  too  favoured  a  place  in  the  Orient 
to  be  crushed.  Safety  and  profit  will  demand  her  in- 
clusion in  the  international  agreement. 

The  world  will  then  be  open  to  the  exploitation  by 
capital  to  an  extent  far  greater  than  has  hitherto  been 
possible.  One  can  imagine  agreement  as  to  methods 
of  combating  labour,  of  checking  freedom  of  speech, 
of  controlling  the  press,  of  allaying  popular  discontent 


THE  CITIZEN  AND 'l  HE  'STAtti"~'~  101 

by  tactful  concessions.  One  can  conceive  of  world- 
wide programs  of  social  betterment  whose  end  shall 
be  to  create  a  contented  and  efficient  industrial  class 
similar  to  that  of  Germany.  To  steal  the  program 
of  the  socialists,  to  anticipate  popular  pressure  by 
yielding  somewhat  but  without  relinquishing  control, 
should  be  the  "enlightened  policy"  of  the  world 
financiers  of  the  future. 

Are  these  developments  fanciful  only,  or  do  they 
pre-suppose  a  Machiavellian  cleverness  such  as  capi- 
talism has  never  yet  displayed?  It  is  easy  in  ret- 
rospect to  attribute  to  foresight  and  intelligence 
what  is  more  truly  the  result  of  the  hard  knocks  of  ex- 
perience and  the  necessity  of  compromise  between 
forces  of  nearly  equal  strength.  It  is  a  mistake  we 
are  prone  to  commit  when  we  survey  the  develop- 
ment of  capitalistic  industry  and  recognize  the  hold 
which  it  has  upon  us.  In  reality  the  capitalistic  class 
is  composed  of  men  whose  foresight  is  no  greater 
than  that  of  other  men  save  as  it  has  to  do  with 
profits.  They  are  deficient  in  theory  and  blind  to  the 
larger  social  implications  of  their  particular  enter- 
prise. But  in  business,  which  is  a  form  of  warfare, 
they  have  learned  to  respect  strength,  have  found  that 
it  is  better  to  effect  a  truce  than  to  achieve  an  exhaust- 
ing victory,  and  have  a  quick  eye  to  utilize  any  chance 
aids  which  come  their  way.  Their  achievements  are 
less  swiftly  realized  than  were  they  the  result  of 


102  THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

plan  and  intelligent  prevision,  but  the  ultimate  result 
is  much  the  same.  Nor  should  we  suppose  them  less 
intelligent  than  ourselves  who  speculate  upon  their 
motives  and  intentions.  If  war  and  rivalry  mean 
waste,  and  waste  means  loss  of  profits,  they  should 
learn  the  lesson  as  well  as  we.  And  should  they  seize 
the  machinery  for  national  and  international  regula- 
tion of  industry  and  seek  to  turn  it  to  their  profit,  they 
will  do  only  what  we  seek  to  do,  albeit  with  a  dif- 
ferent purpose. 

That  any  world  alliance  of  the  forces  of  capital 
could  prevent  social  revolt,  even  though  granting  con- 
cessions to  the  workers,  is  doubtful.  The  intelligence 
of  the  world  is  not  so  easily  controlled  as  its  mines 
and  rubber  forests.  But  effective  revolt  can  be  long 
postponed  if  capital  succeeds  in  intrenching  itself 
behind  international  agreements  and  conducts  its  in- 
dustries without  too  bitter  economic  oppression.  Our 
concern  is  to  prevent  such  immediate  gain  in  power 
whatever  our  confidence  in  the  triumph  of  democracy 
over  autocracy.  We  should  like  to  share  in  that 
triumph  and  not  leave  all  its  fruits  to  the  enjoyment 
of  posterity. 

What  measures,  then,  may  we  adopt  to  check  this 
last  metamorphosis  of  autocracy  in  its  Protean  forms? 
To  have  escaped  from  the  terrors  of  German  militar- 
ism into  the  clutches  of  world-wide  capitalism  will 
profit  us  little.  True  democracy,  economic  no  less 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE       103 

than  political,  would  be  weakened  thereby.  The  con- 
trolling power  of  the  world  would  not  be  so  apparent 
as  before  nor  its  abuses  so  gross,  but  it  would  be  all 
the  more  formidable.  We  have  in  order  to  prevent 
such  a  consummation,  to  increase  the  democratic  con- 
trol of  industry  in  England  and  the  United  States. 
In  the  United  States  this  means  federal  ownership  of, 
or  direct  participation  of  the  government  in  the  ad- 
ministration of,  the  railways,  telegraph  and  telephone 
systems,  the  maintenance  of  the  food  dictatorship 
established  under  war  conditions,  and  the  taking  over 
by  the  state  for  national  development  of  mines,  for- 
ests, and  water  power.  The  war  is  demonstrating 
that  such  an  enlargement  of  governmental  powers 
is  feasible  and  the  machinery  to  this  end  is  much 
of  it  already  in  existence.  The  broad  principles  un- 
derlying the  action  can  be  simply  put:  those  economic 
resources  and  industries  vital  to  the  national  welfare 
should  be  under  the  nation's  direct  control  in  order 
to  insure  their  just  and  equitable  management.  It 
has  been  suggested,  also,  that  labour  representatives 
should  sit  as  members  in  the  directorates  of  all  cor- 
porations, an  eminently  reasonable  procedure.  And, 
further,  there  should  be  a  minimum  wage  law  which 
would  insure  a  higher  standard  of  living  than  now 
maintains. 

Such  government  participation  in  industry  is  vital 
if  we  are  ever  to  adjust  production  to  consumption. 


104     THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

Our  present  competitive  system  is  notoriously  ineffi- 
cient in  this  respect.  Periods  of  over  production 
alternate  with  periods  of  depression,  periods  of  high 
wages  and  high  prices  with  those  of  unemployment 
and  low  prices.  It  is  a  fearsomely  hazardous  sys- 
tem, productive  of  misery  and  dread.  Nor  are  its 
evil  effects  purely  national.  Indirectly  they  are  a 
contributing  cause  to  international  friction  and  wars. 
Over  production  necessitates  the  "dumping"  of  goods 
abroad  at  cost  prices  or  even  lower  in  order  that  prices 
at  home  may  be  maintained.  This  is  a  distinct  in- 
jury to  foreign  producers  and  a  legitimate  cause  of 
grievance.  Ultimately  the  domestic  production  of 
the  nations  will  need  to  be  determined  in  part  by 
national  needs  and  in  part  by  international  agree- 
ment whereby  it  shall  be  determined  how  much  goods 
shall  be  produced  for  interchange  with  other  coun- 
tries. Such  an  agreement  will  be  necessary  to  equal- 
ize production,  consumption,  and  prices  throughout 
the  world. 

These  proposed  modifications  of  our  industrial  sys- 
tem though  socialistic  in  trend  are  not  state  socialism. 
There  would  still  remain  a  wide  margin  for  individ- 
ual initiative  and  enterprise.  Whether  initiative 
needs  the  spur  of  large  prospective  rewards  experi- 
ence alone  can  show.  I  do  not  believe  it  necessary, 
myself.  I  believe  men  work  largely  for  the  pleasure 
of  achievement,  self  realization,  the  sense  of  power. 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE        105 

I  am  confident  that  some  form  of  socialistic  co-opera- 
tion is  the  goal  of  our  industrial  society.  But  be 
this  as  it  may,  socialism  cannot  be  achieved  in  a  day 
and  in  realizing  such  a  program  as  I  have  sketched 
there  is  sufficient  to  absorb  our  energies  for  some  time 
to  come.  Are  any  of  the  suggested  steps  impracti- 
cable? I  think  not.  Difficult  they  may  be  but  all 
have  been  taken  either  here  or  abroad  under  the  stress 
of  war.  What  can  be  done  in  war  can  be  better 
and  more  wisely  done  in  peace. 

Political  changes  must,  however,  prelude  and  ac- 
company so  great  an  economic  revolution.  The  ma- 
chinery for  the  popular  control  of  government  is  now 
quite  inadequate  to  its  professed  purpose.  It  is  now 
freely  admitted  that  the  founders  of  our  government 
were  more  democratic  in  theory  than  in  fact,  and  our 
subsequent  political  history  has  been  largely  the  effort 
of  the  people  to  thwart  the  professional  politicians 
and  the  special  interests  in  their  attempt  to  control 
our  political  institutions.  The  successes  have  been 
sporadic  and  superficial  rather  than  continuous  and 
profound.  The  political  boss  is  less  crude  than  for- 
merly but  he  still  exists;  and  special  interests  are 
still  potent  to  choose  our  representatives  and  to  gain 
the  ear  of  Congress,  state  legislature,  and  city  coun- 
cil. Our  political  history  is  the  record  of  periodic 
and  petty  revolution  punctuated  by  stretches  of  popu- 
lar apathy. 


106     THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

Yet  popular  revolt  has  achieved  its  victories.  Sen- 
ators are  now  elected  by  popular  vote,  many  of  our 
small  cities  have  established  efficient  forms  of  govern- 
ment, and  in  a  considerable  number  of  states  women 
are  now  entitled  to  vote  and  to  hold  office.  The  pro- 
fessional politician  continues  to  throw  monkey 
wrenches  into  the  wheels  of  political  progress  but  the 
car  does  move,  though  haltingly.  Movements  for 
the  short  ballot,  the  appointment  rather  than  the  elec- 
tion of  judges,  the  referendum  and  recall,  and  the 
separation  of  state  and  municipal  elections  from 
national  elections  are  gaining  in  strength.  More  im- 
portant than  these,  perhaps,  is  the  demand  for  propor- 
tional representation  in  legislative  bodies  whereby 
small  groups  may  find  a  political  voice.  Various  de- 
vices have  been  invented  to  this  end  and  the  adoption 
of  some  one  of  them  seems  imperative.  Minority 
parties  have  only  an  indirect  and  slight  influence 
upon  legislation  in  our  system  as  at  present  consti- 
tuted. It  is  highly  desirable  that  they  be  granted 
representation  in  proportion  to  the  number  of  their 
adherents,  and  some  form  of  preferential  or  group 
voting  is  necessary  to  this  end. 

Our  present  system  expresses  the  tyranny  of  majori- 
ties or  more  often  the  tyranny  of  the  strongest  minor- 
ity group.  A  member  of  Congress  seldom  represents 
a  homogeneous  constituency.  He  is  a  plurality  choice 
of  electors  with  various  and  opposed  interests,  All 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE        107 

of  these  he  cannot  represent  and  he  chooses,  therefore, 
to  represent  the  strongest  of  the  minority  groups,  not 
necessarily  of  the  greatest  numerical  strength  but 
greatest  in  power  and  influence.  This  is  usually  the 
propertied  group  which,  consequently,  is  represented 
in  our  legislative  bodies  far  more  numerously  than  on 
the  basis  of  numbers  solely  it  is  entitled  to  be.  La- 
bour interests  suffer  in  inverse  ratio,  and  we  have  the 
curious  result  that  in  Congress  the  labour  interests  are 
far  less  represented  than  in  England  or  most  of  the 
continental  countries.  Labour  legislation  in  this 
country  is  consequently  primitive  and  unenlightened. 
If  the  impending  governmental  control  of  industry  is 
to  become  democratic  in  its  nature,  extensive  changes 
in  our  electoral  machinery  and  methods  seem,  then,  a 
prime  requisite. 

Strictly  proportional  representation  would,  of 
course,  go  far  to  transfer  the  class  control  of  indus- 
try that  now  exists  to  the  hands  of  the  mass,  for  as 
I  have  been  endeavouring  to  show  it  will  be  less  possi- 
ble in  the  future  even  than  now  to  divorce  political 
and  economic  issues.  They  are  one  and  the  same, 
and  in  a  country  whose  institutions  were  genuinely 
democratic  all  economic  legislation  would  necessarily 
aim  at  the  welfare  of  the  workers  who  constitute  the 
majority  of  the  citizens  even  though  such  legislation 
was  at  the  expense  of  the  propertied  classes,  which, 
in  the  main,  it  would  inevitably  be.  Therefore  all 


108      THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

liberal  innovations  in  our  political  machinery  have 
been  fought  by  capitalism  and  will  continue  so  to  be 
fought  while  our  present  system  of  industrial  warfare 
and  class  rivalry  persists.  But  it  is  for  this  same  rea- 
son that  men  of  liberal  leanings,  who  believe  in  the 
mission  of  democracy,  must  unite  to  secure  it  the 
means  to  demonstrate  its  fitness  to  control  our  society 
both  in  political  and  economic  institutions.  Political 
democracy  leads  ultimately  to  economic  equality, 
though  the  road  may  be  long.  Autocracy  in  wealth 
is  its  inevitable  foe.  Their  ends  can  never  be  the 
same. 

In  the  world  of  real  things  rather  than  political  and 
economic  theory,  among  people  of  mixed  impulses 
and  confused  thinking,  the  essential  antagonism  of 
democracy  in  politics  and  industry,  on  the  one  hand, 
with  privilege,  wealth,  and  autocracy  on  the  other 
is  seldom  clearly  perceived.  A  man  benefiting  from 
monopoly  and  privilege  may  give  his  wealth  freely 
in  a  war  of  democratic  peoples  with  a  military  autoc- 
racy. He  may  even  spend  his  time  and  money  to 
secure  the  election  of  honest  and  competent  legisla- 
tors or  to  effect  an  improvement  in  political  ma- 
chinery. He  does  not  perceive  that  his  power  to 
profit  from  his  fellow  citizens  is  due  to  their  political 
inability  to  curb  that  power.  Nor  if  the  issue  were 
clear  would  all  those  who  enjoy  privilege  cling  to  it 
and  do  all  in  their  power  to  thwart  democracy.  The 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE        109 

leaders  in  the  fight  for  freedom  have  often  been  men 
of  means  and  position  desirous  of  destroying  the  very 
conditions  which  make  possible  their  preferred  posi- 
tion. Our  economic  system,  with  the  premium  which 
it  places  upon  selfishness  and  its  extremes  of  poverty 
and  wealth,  happily  neither  destroys  all  altruism  in 
the  rich  nor  all  kindliness  and  charity  in  the  poor. 
And  we  can  anticipate,  in  a  better  social  order  in 
which  self-preservation  is  no  longer  only  another  name 
for  selfishness,  that  the  better  qualities  of  human 
nature  will  have  freer  opportunity  to  flourish. 

If  the  questionable  success  of  democracy  in  Amer- 
ica be  alleged  as  a  ground  for  disbelief  in  democracy 
as  a  theory  of  government,  the  cause  is  insufficient. 
If  our  institutions  have  failed  to  realize  their  preten- 
sions to  popular  representation  and  control,  the  rea- 
son for  this  condition  is  not  inherent  in  the  democratic 
principle  but  in  the  conditions  of  American  life.  We 
have  hitherto  considered  our  industrial  and  our  polit- 
ical life  as  separate  and  distinct.  We  have  failed 
to  perceive  their  vital  interdependence.  We  have 
elected  representatives  not  to  guide  our  social  and 
industrial  progress  but  to  carry  on  the  minimum  of 
government  necessary  to  national  defence  and  the 
operation  of  our  courts  of  justice.  We  have  acted  on 
the  belief  that  a  man's  chief  duty  was  to  make  a 
living  and  that  this  was  best  achieved  by  free  indus- 
trial competition.  We  have  conceived  it  to  be  the 


110     THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

government's  business,  so  far  as  possible,  to  keep 
hands  off. 

With  such  a  conception  of  the  subordinate  place  of 
government  in  our  lives,  it  is  no  wonder  that  our  rep- 
resentatives have  too  often  been  men  incompetent  to 
deal  with  social  and  economic  problems,  men  who 
have  made  a  business  of  office  holding  and  whom  the 
electors  responsible  for  their  election  have  regarded 
more  with  amusement  than  with  serious  interest  and 
concern.  Let  it  once  be  recognized  that  the  function 
of  the  state  is  not  narrowly  political  but  primarily 
economic,  and  the  American  citizen  will  make  poli- 
tics, as  he  has  hitherto  made  business,  the  chief  con- 
cern of  life.  Those  who  profit  by  things  as  they  are 
have  for  a  long  time  past  made  the  politics  of  ob- 
struction their  serious  business.  Those  who  are  to 
profit  by  things  as  they  should  be  will  have  to  make 
the  politics  of  economic  reorganization  their  main  in- 
terest. 

That  Americans  already  perceive  the  serious  nature 
of  politics  and  its  relation  to  our  material  well  being 
is  evident,  I  thinkj  from  our  recent  history  and  is 
apparent  in  our  tentative  efforts  to  meet  the  serious- 
ness of  the  labour  situation  by  political  action.  Until 
recently  our  labour  classes  have  been  on  the  whole, 
better  off  than  similar  classes  in  England  notwith- 
standing the  more  intelligent  industrial  legislation  in 
England  than  in  the  United  States.  The  standard  of 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE        111 

living  here  has  heen  relatively  high,  the  opportunity 
for  advancement,  greater.  But  this  condition  has 
been  due  to  the  happy  accidents  of  economic  position, 
particularly  to  the  vast  areas  of  cheap  and  fertile 
lands  which  have  served  to  keep  wages  high.  Cer- 
tainly whatever  privileges  and  advantages  labour  has 
enjoyed  have  not  been  the  product  of  legislative  fore- 
sight and  wisdom,  and  now  that  the  conditions  which 
produced  them  have  largely  disappeared,  the  free 
lands  put  under  cultivation  and  the  labour  market 
flooded  with  immigrant  workers,  American  labour 
is  losing  its  preferred  position.  That  this  is  so  is 
evident  in  the  growing  intensity  of  the  struggle  be- 
tween capital  and  labour,  the  effort  of  manufacturers' 
associations  to  break  the  power  of  the  unions  and  that 
of  organized  labour  to  hold  its  place.  And  despite 
the  successes  of  some  of  the  stronger  unions,  suc- 
cesses due  in  large  part  to  abnormal  war-time  condi- 
tions, the  position  of  organized  labour  looks  to  an  out- 
sider very  precarious.  Large  industry  feels  now  as 
never  before  the  solidarity  of  its  interests.  Indus- 
trial leaders  believe  as  formerly  in  their  "right  to  run 
their  own  business,"  and  unless  the  government  steps 
in  to  regulate  industrial  conditions  they  bid  fair  to 
attain  their  purpose  more  effectually  than  ever  be- 
fore. 

Ways  of  warfare  are  also  being  improved,   for 
though  the  old  brutal  methods  of  rifle  and  strike 


112   THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

breaker  are  still  resorted  to,  employers  are  learning 
that  other  methods  are  less  wasteful,  arouse  less 
popular  protest,  and  are,  in  the  end,  more  efficacious. 
They  have  discovered,  some  of  them,  that  contented 
workers,  moderately  well  paid,  comfortably  housed, 
and  promised  pensions  for  a  lifetime  of  faithful  serv- 
ice do  more  and  better  work  than  employes  who  are 
discontented,  made  to  work  too  long  hours,  and  forced 
to  live  under  conditions  which  reduce  their  physical 
strength  and  endurance.  Profit  sharing  and  bonus 
systems  have  also  been  introduced  in  some  indus- 
tries. And  insofar  as  these  enlightened  methods  have 
raised  the  standard  of  living  they  are  good.  Insofar, 
however,  as  they  have  weakened  labour  organizations 
and  reduced  labour's  power  of  collective  bargaining 
they  are  inimical  to  a  democratic  society.  Democ- 
racy demands  that  the  workers  be  a  power  in  deter- 
mining the  conditions  of  industry  and  sharing  in  its 
profits.  A  working  population  kept  innocuous 
through  tactful  concessions  in  hours  and  wages  but 
weakened  thereby  in  its  power  to  organize  and  intim- 
idated by  fear  of  losing  a  job  or  the  prospect  of  a 
pension,  is  one  that  men  of  liberal  principles  cannot 
contemplate  without  grave  concern. 

The  most  dangerous  situation  for  American  labour 
is  improved  working  conditions  bought  at  the  price  of 
a  weakened  organization  and  consequent  diminished 
industrial  and  political  power.  And  it  is  perhaps  a 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE        113 

fortunate  thing  for  the  welfare  of  the  country  that 
enlightened  methods  of  industrial  warfare  do  not  pre- 
vail so  widely  that  the  people  as  a  whole  are  wooed 
to  a  sense  of  security  and  made  forgetful  of  the  un- 
solved problems  of  democratic  economy.  Flagrant 
examples  of  the  industrial  tyranny  exercised  by  capi- 
tal are  signalized  by  the  recent  strikes  in  the  Michigan 
mining  district  and  in  Bayonne,  New  Jersey.  Of  the 
first,  and  the  impossible  conditions  and  injustice 
which  led  ignorant  unskilled  foreign  labour  of  several 
races  to  effect  a  crude  organization  and  revolt,  no 
word  that  I  have  read  was  printed  in  our  newspapers. 
Of  the  Bayonne  strike,  reports  deliberately  falsified 
were  printed  in  the  New  York  papers.  But  such 
methods  are  short-sighted.  The  truth  creeps  out 
somehow  and  makes  the  average  citizen  profoundly 
cynical  of  corporation  methods  and  sceptical  of  the 
news  that  he  reads  in  the  commercialized  press.1 

Yet  more  mediaeval  in  method  and  perhaps  more 
influential  in  stirring  public  opinion  have  been  the 
occasional  attempts  to  discredit  trade-unionism  by 
convicting  labour  leaders  of  homicides  or  attempted 
homicides  engineered  by  capitalistic  groups.  These 
bespeak  a  barbarism  as  great  as  that  existing  in  Rus- 

1The  report  of  the  President's  Mediation  Commission  with  its 
astonishing  revelation  of  the  high-handed  stupidity  of  mine  owners 
in  Arizona  and  of  the  lumbermen  in  the  Northwest,  affords  excellent 
and  more  recent  instances  of  industrial  anarchy  deliberately  mis- 
represented in  our  press. 


114   THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

sia  previous  to  the  revolution.  Indeed  the  striking 
garment  workers  in  Chicago,  young  Russian  girls 
many  of  them,  unjustly  arrested  and  charged  by 
mounted  police  while  peacefully  picketing  during  a 
recent  strike,  denounced  the  police  as  Cossacks.  It  is 
a  novel  idea  to  Americans  that  refugees  from  foreign 
tyranny  should  find  in  America  the  same  brutal 
methods  of  oppression  that  prevailed  in  their  own 
country. 

Yet  these  exaggerated  instances  of  capitalistic  bru- 
tality and  blindness  serve  the  excellent  purpose  of  re- 
minding us  that  the  problem  of  capital  in  its  relation 
to  labour  is  unsolved  and  that  civil  war  exists  within 
the  state.  It  is  inconceivable  that  such  conditions  can 
be  much  longer  tolerated.  The  lessons  in  federal 
control  which  we  are  learning  in  the  present  war 
should  teach  us  to  suppress  such  anarchy,  and,  more, 
so  to  alter  industrial  conditions  that  they  shall  hence- 
forth be  determined  by  guiding  principles  of  justice 
formulated  by  the  people.  Before  the  United  States 
entered  the  war  it  seemed  probable  that  the  conclusion 
of  the  peace  would  find  us  the  least  advanced,  the 
least  liberal  of  the  civilized  peoples.  All  western 
Europe  and  Russia  were  learning  at  a  terrible  price 
the  lesson  that  democracy  must  be  efficient  to  combat 
autocracy  successfully.  Essential  to  that  efficiency 
have  been  state  control  of  wages,  hours,  and  working 
conditions  of  the  workers,  and  of  the  relations  of  em- 


THE  CITIZEN  AND  THE  STATE        115 

ployer  and  employed.  Wealth  and  industrial  or- 
ganizations have  been  conscripted  no  less  than  fight- 
ing men.  We  too,  perhaps,  must  pay  the  price  to 
learn  our  lesson.  But  here  and  abroad  the  lesson  will 
mean  little  if  not  learned  once  and  for  all  and  the 
measures  of  control  devised  in  war  times  continued 
after  the  peace.  But  with  this  profound  difference: 
that  the  administrative  machinery  be  no  longer  in  the 
hands  of  a  dictator  but  be  subject  to  the  popular  will. 
If  the  nations  fail  to  perpetuate  their  administrative 
machinery  and  to  devise  means  for  its  popular  control 
things  will  again  assume  dominance  over  men,  and 
autocracy,  in  one  form  or  another,  persist. 

This  is  the  time  to  do  much.  The  reformer  and 
idealist  who  formerly  demanded  these  changes  and 
was  cried  down  as  an  impractical  dreamer  has  been 
justified  by  the  fact.  He  can  point  to  what  has  been 
done  as  proof  that  a  better  political  and  industrial 
organization  is  feasible.  If  we  have  but  the  sense 
to  realize  it  a  newer  society  with  Utopian  possibilities 
is  in  our  hands  to  do  with  what  we  will.  Uncon- 
trolled by  democratic  ideals  the  organization  we  have 
achieved  will  either  dissolve  into  its  old  warring  ele- 
ments or,  more  probably,  be  diverted  to  autocratic 
uses.  We  owe  it  to  those  who  survive  this  war,  and 
even  more  to  those  who  have  died,  to  perpetuate  in 
the  terms  of  peace  and  in  our  national  betterment 
thereafter  the  lessons  in  justice  and  democracy  which 


116   THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

the  war  has  taught.  We  must  demonstrate  that  a 
federation  of  genuinely  free  peoples  can  be  the  out- 
growth of  a  war  of  tyranny  and  terribleness  upon  the 
idealism  of  man. 


IV 

THE   NEW   SOCIAL   MORALITY 

THE  new  internationalism,  relying  as  it  must,  at  the 
outset,  in  part  upon  an  international  police  and  the 
threat  of  force  to  maintain  order  and  prevent  aggres- 
sion, can  hope  for  success  only  as  that  force  is  exer- 
cised justly  and  as  the  smaller  nations  share  increas- 
ingly in  its  control.  England,  France,  and  the  United 
States  must  needs  anticipate  the  democratization  of 
the  international  ruling  body  by  the  voluntary  curtail- 
ment of  their  power  and  influence.  Such  a  surrender 
of  power  for  the  good  of  the  greatest  number,  essen- 
tial as  it  is  to  a  truly  democratic  federation  of  the 
world,  will  demand  a  greater  unselfishness  among  the 
nations,  a  more  complete  surrender  of  that  false  pride 
of  race  and  the  narrow  patriotism  which  we  now  know 
than  history  has  yet  witnessed.  Only  through  this 
voluntary  relinquishment  of  power,  however,  can  the 
fatal  belief  in  imperial  destiny  and  the  divine  right 
to  rule  be  quenched.  It  is  conceivable  that  these 
national  obsessions  may  die  out,  in  a  saner  world,  with 

a  freer  interchange  of  thought  and  a  closer  political 

117 


118  THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

organization  than  at  present  exists;  but  if  this  is  to  be 
so,  national  self -consciousness,  racial  vanity,  and  the 
restricted  patriotism  of  our  day  must  no  longer  be 
kept  alive  by  commercial  profits  fostered  by  political 
prestige.  As  surely  as  a  league  to  enforce  peace  be- 
comes a  league  of  commercially  powerful  nations  ex- 
ploiting the  rest  of  the  world  to  its  profit,  so  certainly 
will  democratic  world  organization  be  checked  at  its 
inception.  The  desire  for  profits  when  added  to 
racial  enmities  and  national  jealousies  is  too  great 
a  force  for  idealism  to  overcome.  Therefore  eco- 
nomic democracy  must  accompany  political  democ- 
racy. 

Such  a  relinquishment  of  the  desire  for  world 
power  in  trade  demands  in  the  individual  nations, 
as  we  have  seen,  an  economic  reorganization  aiming 
at  the  democratic  control  of  all  the  forces  of  the  state, 
the  checking  of  capitalism,  and  the  relinquishment  by 
the  powerful  few  of  their  present  ideals  of  exploita- 
tion. It  demands  that  standards  of  living  be  raised, 
that  poverty  and  disease  be  eradicated,  and  that  hu- 
man equality  as  we  have  defined  it  be  secured  in  far 
greater  degree  than  we  now  know.  Apparently,  then, 
this  change  in  national  ideals  and  the  consequent  de- 
struction of  international  rivalries  demands  an  en- 
largement of  our  social  morality  as  manifested  in  our 
economic  society  today. 

But  the  higher  social  morality  which  is  displacing 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY         119 

the  older  individual  codes  already  exists  in  more  than 
rudimentary  form.  It  has  been  developing  through- 
out the  last  hundred  years.  In  the  last  twenty  it  has 
grown  with  marvellous  rapidity,  preparing  the  way 
for  vast  social  changes  of  which  we  have  as  yet  only 
scattered  hints  in  actual  institutions.  It  seems  prob- 
able that  the  war  will  do  much  to  disseminate  the 
ideals  of  this  morality  yet  farther.  The  war  touches 
in  every  capacity  the  lives  of  the  nations  engaged, 
influencing  peasant  and  artisan  no  less  than  king  and 
warlord.  The  millions  of  men  under  arms  will  re- 
turn to  their  homes  with  a  new  discontent  with  the 
old  order  and  its  injustices,  inequalities,  and  brutali- 
ties. From  this  society  of  ours  has  sprung  war  and 
all  its  horror  and  agony.  It  is  inconceivable  that 
men  should  henceforth  be  content  with  their  old  ways. 
The  discontent  engendered  by  the  war  is  manifest. 
Revolt  in  Russia,  revolution  in  China  and  the  East, 
the  demands  of  labour  in  all  industrial  states  are  but 
surface  indications  of  a  world-wide  unrest.  Even 
more  significant  is  the  religious  tone  of  the  literature 
of  the  day.  Men  are  examining  their  beliefs.  Con- 
ventional acceptances,  a  superficial  orthodoxy,  do  not 
suffice  the  human  soul  in  hours  of  agony  and  loss. 
The  war  has  brought  us  face  to  face  with  poignant 
realities  and  we  need  a  new  religion  and  a  new 
morality  if  we  are  to  endure  the  vision  of  them.  The 
old  religion  of  other-worldliness  with  its  justifica- 


120      THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

tion  of  things  as  they  are,  inequalities  and  suffering 
being  imposed  by  an  infallible  God  for  disciplinary 
purposes,  is  a  poor  solace  to  men  and  women  suffer- 
ing the  agonies  of  this  war.  A  God  who  should  de- 
cree such  pain  is  not  one  in  whom  they  can  believe. 
No  heavenly  recompense,  no  ethical  gain  from  suf- 
fering can  justify  the  pain  of  life  to  them. 

They  ask  of  religion  that  it  aid  them  to  refashion 
the  world  into  a  place  tolerable  to  human  existence. 
They  ask  a  God  who  needs  their  aid,  not  one  who  de- 
mands their  submission.  Life  proves  so  inconceiv- 
ably horrible  in  time  of  war,  so  far  beneath  the  aspi- 
rations of  all  men,  that  they  turn  savagely  upon  the 
whole  order  of  their  existence  resolved  to  sweep  away 
the  pack  of  lies  and  half  truths  taught  by  religion, 
education,  and  social  tradition.  Nor  are  there  lack- 
ing ideals  for  a  new  social  order,  a  loftier  morality, 
and  nobler  conceptions  of  God  than  of  one  who,  for 
an  inscrutable  purpose,  dooms  the  greater  part  of 
mankind  to  misery  in  times  of  peace  and  to  agony  in 
times  of  war. 

The  root  ideal  of  the  new  order  of  human  life  we 
know  as  democracy,  if  we  think  of  it  in  political 
terms;  as  universal  brotherhood,  if  our  point  of  view 
is  economic;  and  as  pantheism  if  our  interest  is 
theological.  Politically  the  ideal  demands  that  every 
man  and  woman  have  an  equal  voice  in  the  manage- 
ment of  human  society  for  the  welfare  of  all.  Those 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY        121 

who  administer  the  government  do  so  as  representa- 
tives of  the  mass  and  are  elected  by  it.  This  ideal 
is  so  widespread  and  its  further  dissemination  is  so 
certain  that  no  more  need  be  said  of  it.  But  the  ne- 
cessity, for  its  realization,  that  our  social  and  eco- 
nomic aims  be  altogether  altered,  and  back  of  this 
our  individual  morality  and  conception  of  God  is 
not  so  clear.  We  do  not  always  see  that  a  political 
democracy  is  possible  only  in  a  society  which  knows 
no  great  disparities  in  wealth  and  in  which  the  am- 
bitions and  desires  of  the  individual  are  not  primarily 
economic.  Nor  do  we  always  realize  that  God  can 
no  longer  be  conceived  of  as  a  remote  and  distant 
force  enslaving  men  for  his  obscure  purposes,  but  the 
larger  all-embracing  consciousness  of  the  world  real- 
izing his  aims  through  the  willing  co-operation  of  men. 
The  chain  must  be  complete  if  men  are  to  be  bound  to 
worthy  action,  international  and  national  ideals  find- 
ing their  strength  in  individual  morality,  which  de- 
rives its  inspiration  from  an  immanent  God. 

The  ambitions  of  most  men  in  our  day  are  to 
acquire  property  in  order  that  they  may  have  free- 
dom of  movement,  bodily  ease,  opportunity  to  marry 
whom  they  choose,  and  leisure  for  the  gratification  of 
tastes  and  aptitudes.  The  end  they  seek  is  some 
vague  freedom,  some  hazy  happiness.  But  so  great 
is  the  struggle  for  the  attainment  of  the  means  that 
the  end  is  seldom  realized.  Even  those  who  secure 


122   THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

independence  find  that  the  effort  has  exhausted  their 
energy  or  diverted  their  very  interest  to  money  get- 
ting. In  the  effort  to  acquire  they  fail  to  learn  how 
to  spend.  They  are  unfitted  to  enjoy  art  and  litera- 
ture or  to  learn  from  travel  and  social  intercourse. 
The  cultivation  of  the  arts  becomes  the  collecting 
of  pictures,  first  editions,  and  fine  bindings.  Social 
life  becomes  competitive  ostentation — "conspicuous 
waste."  The  man  who  has  both  the  means  and  the 
taste  to  make  his  life  an  instance  of  what  life  at  its 
best  may  be  is  very  rare. 

That  many  men  now,  and  ultimately  all  men,  should 
live  finely,  economic  security  must  be  made  univer- 
sal. There  is  inevitable  work  in  the  world,  for  we 
must  be  fed  and  clothed,  and  this  work  must  be 
shared.  But  toil  is  not  good  in  itself.  Possibly 
there  is  moral  and  spiritual  value  to  be  got  from 
digging  in  the  earth  and  watching  things  grow  from 
one's  labour.  But  when  one  must  work  ten  and 
twelve  hours  a  day  in  good  weather  and  bad  there 
is  left  no  margin  for  spiritual  experience  and  men- 
tal enjoyment.  Toil  is  a  necessity  only,  and  the 
aim  of  society  is  to  make  it  bear  lightly  upon  all. 
Creative  work,  done  for  the  joy  of  making,  the  work 
of  the  artist  and  craftsman,  is  another  thing.  It  is 
recreation  not  toil.  If  the  accumulated  wealth  of  the 
world  were  divided  more  equitably  and  if  the  vast 
waste  and  reduplication  of  effort  in  our  chaotic  eco- 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY        123 

nomic  system  were  eliminated,  the  hours  of  toil  re- 
quired of  us  all  could  be  vastly  reduced,  how  much 
only  the  experiment  itself  can  reveal.  Then  the  prac- 
tice of  the  arts  and  crafts,  and  the  refinement  of  social 
intercourse  would  be  our  chief  concern  and  interest. 
In  these  we  should  find  the  means  to  a  finer  and  more 
joyous  way  of  life. 

The  development  of  machine  industry  in  the  last 
century  came  too  soon  and  too  rapidly  for  its  best 
social  utilization.  Here  as  in  other  instances — 
notably  the  scientific  warfare  of  our  day — human  in- 
ventions outstripped  institutional  and  moral  develop- 
ment. The  tremendous  increase  in  the  world's 
wealth  made  possible  by  the  use  of  machinery  was 
under  no  social  control.  Society  at  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century  was,  economically,  much  as  it  had 
been  since  the  beginning  of  time,  a  struggle  for  sur- 
vival little  regulated  or  ameliorated  by  the  state.  The 
moral  code  justified  a  man  in  securing  all  the  wealth 
he  could  get  and  expending  it  as  he  chose.  He  ex- 
acted the  highest  prices  for  his  product  that  he  could 
secure;  he  paid  his  workman  no  more  than  he  must. 
The  economic  theories  of  the  laissez  faire  system  were 
developed  to  explain  the  facts  as  they  existed.  Work- 
ers in  free  competition  for  jobs,  producers  competing 
freely — freedom  was  the  political  catchword  of  the 
day,  and  therefore  the  economist  labelled  the  com- 
petitive system  then  existing  as  free. 


124   THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

How  empty  is  such  freedom  we  have  learned  to  our 
cost  in  the  last  one  hundred  years.  The  state  has  in- 
creasingly been  forced  to  interfere,  restricting  capital 
in  its  uses  and  ameliorating  the  condition  of  labour — 
to  no  great  extent  in  either  case,  but  somewhat.  And 
meanwhile  our  social  morality  has  slowly  altered,  a 
fact  made  evident  by  the  distaste  we  feel  for  the  in- 
dustrial warfare  of  our  time.  That  warfare  is  fre- 
quently as  barbarous  as  in  1840  in  the  factory  towns 
of  the  north  of  England;  so  too  is  the  warfare  in  the 
trenches  in  Flanders  as  barbarous  as  that  of  the 
Napoleonic  era.  But  the  moral  protest  of  the  world 
in  both  instances  is  vastly  stronger  and  more  universal 
than  it  was  a  hundred  or  even  fifty  years  ago.  The 
conviction  is  growing  that  both  war  and  industrial 
strife  can  and  must  be  prevented.  Dimly  we  perceive 
that  our  ideals  of  nationality  and  international  rivalry 
have  all  been  wrong.  Dimly  we  realize  that  the  in- 
dustrial warfare  of  our  day  is  likewise  a  survival 
from  barbaric  times. 

The  newer  social  morality  demands  that  our  indus- 
trial arena  be  something  other  than  a  gladiatorial  cir- 
cus wherein  Christian  folk  are  slaughtered  by  the 
mercenaries.  It  would  do  away  with  economic 
rivalry  and  "survival  of  the  fittest,"  and  place  land 
and  those  products  of  the  earth  essential  to  human 
subsistence  within  the  control  of  the  state  for  the  good 
of  all.  Excessive  and  irksome  toil  it  looks  upon  as 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY        125 

an  evil  remediable  by  a  little  human  foresight,  in- 
genuity, and  goodwill.  It  is  feasible  that  every 
human  being  should  have  ample  of  the  necessaries  of 
life  in  return  for  a  few  hours  of  work  daily  under 
wholesome  conditions.  That  the  problem  of  indus- 
trial re-organization  is  a  complicated  and  difficult 
one  does  not  make  its  solution  the  less  imperative. 
Nor  is  it  a  task  too  great  for  human  intelligence  pro- 
vided we  attack  it  with  sufficient  fervour.  Problems 
almost  as  difficult  are  being  solved  today  under  the 
stress  of  war.  The  greatest  obstacle  to  it  is  that  the 
most  powerful  among  us  lack  as  yet  an  idealism  suffi- 
ciently compelling  to  enforce  what  they  falsely  con- 
ceive to  be  a  great  personal  sacrifice. 

For  an  economic  democracy  presupposes  the  con- 
fiscation of  vested  wealth  to  state  control,  or  the  volun- 
tary surrender  of  wealth  from  motives  of  patriotism 
and  goodwill.  It  is  conceivable  that  patriotism  may 
come  to  mean  this,  the  free  offering  in  times  of  peace, 
no  less  than  in  times  of  war,  of  property  and  human 
services  to  the  needs  of  the  state.  It  is  only  the 
logical  enlargement  of  an  altruistic  motive  of  great 
power  in  human  life.  In  times  of  war  and  national 
peril  whole  nations,  like  communities  devastated  by 
fire  or  earthquake,  sink  their  differences  of  class  and 
caste  and  offer  their  lives  and  property  to  the  common 
weal.  Much  of  the  selfishness  which  is  the  natural 
product  of  our  economic  system  in  times  of  peace  is 


126      THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

forgotten.  And  from  this  surrender  of  self  and  per- 
sonal ambitions  there  is  born  a  feeling  of  community 
interest,  of  ^brotherhood,  which  in  the  eyes  of  some 
goes  far  to  justify  war.  Those  who  remain  at  home 
feel  something  of  the  soldier's  pride  in  his  corps, 
something  of  his  sense  of  comradeship  with  his  fel- 
low soldiers.  But  when  the  moment  of  peril  is  over, 
the  passion  for  brotherly  helpfulness  slowly  fades, 
men  relapse  into  their  old  rivalries  and  jealousies, 
and  patriotism  becomes  again  a  conventional  and 
meaningless  sentiment. 

The  ability  to  forget  rivalries  and  jealousies  and 
work  for  a  common  cause,  and  the  feeling  of  brother- 
hood which  comes  from  such  devotion,  are  forces 
which  we  should  seek  to  utilize  not  rarely  in  times  of 
war  but  constantly  in  times  of  peace.  If,  at  the  height 
of  their  patriotic  ardour,  men  could  be  made  to  see 
that  human  brotherhood  is  the  most  desirable  and 
possible  of  conditions  they  would  be  moved  to  offer 
themselves  to  the  constructive  work  of  peace  as  for  the 
destructive  work  of  war.  But  only  as  some  such 
moment  of  high  feeling  is  seized  by  the  leaders  of  the 
nations  will  society  make  that  sudden  leap  from  its 
present  state  of  semi-barbarism  to  a  civilization  com- 
mensurate with  its  best  ideals.  Such  a  moment  will 
be  the  coming  peace  when,  with  the  sacrifices  of  the 
war  still  vividly  before  them,  men  will  pause  an 
instant  before  resuming  the  pursuits  of  normal  life 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY        127 

and  ask  themselves  why  such  horrors  need  ever  be 
repeated.  That  will  be  the  time  to  turn  men's 
thoughts  to  the  problem  of  altering  the  world  into 
something  more  generous,  finer,  more  truly  expres- 
sive of  their  better  selves. 

War,  with  all  its  recrudescence  of  primitive  pas- 
sions and  savagery  is  not  truly  expressive  of  men. 
They  look  with  horror  upon  the  thing  they  have  made 
and  cannot  undo.  Nor  is  our  civilization  in  times  of 
peace  truly  expressive  of  men.  It  is  less  generous 
than  they,  more  heartless  and  unfeeling.  Like  war, 
our  industrial  society  with  its  cruelties  and  oppres- 
sions is  a  vast  and  terrible  mechanism,  so  strong  and 
complicated  that  individual  men  feel  helpless  to  re- 
make it  upon  saner  and  juster  lines.  Only  when,  as 
in  war,  men  are  moved  by  overwhelming  emotion  are 
they  able  to  free  themselves  from  the  heritage  of  the 
past  and  work  freely  to  the  accomplishment  of  a  com- 
mon end.  For  the  transformation  demanded  in  peace 
a  wave  of  religious  emotion  would  be  the  most  fit- 
ting medium.  But  to  this  we  can  hardly  look  hope- 
fully in  the  present  stage  of  the  world,  not  at  least 
to  such  religious  emotion  as  we  have  known  in  the 
past.  But  that  the  leaders  of  the  world  should,  at  the 
peace,  call  upon  the  latent  altruism  and  goodwill  of 
men  that  exists  in  all,  irrespective  of  religious  affilia- 
tions, would  accomplish  much.  An  appeal  to  the 
rich  and  the  powerful  to  forego  selfish  ambitions  and 


128      THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

aid  the  state  to  social  betterment  would  go  far  to 
guide  civilization  into  new  paths,  would  perhaps  re- 
mould our  society,  for  the  rich  no  less  than  the  poor 
are  unable  to  find  genuine  happiness  in  the  world 
which  we  know. 

Those  sensitive  to  modern  ideals,  growingly  con- 
scious of  the  needs  of  their  fellows,  as  all  men  of 
fine  feeling  must  be  today,  know  that  only  as  the 
society  about  them  is  freed  from  injustice  and  suffer- 
ing can  they  as  individuals,  no  matter  what  their 
wealth  and  freedom,  find  happiness.  The  modern 
world  differs  profoundly  in  this  respect  from  the 
Athenian  state  to  which  we  look  for  much  of  our  in- 
spiration in  literature  and  art.  Athens  was  based 
upon  slavery,  and  the  leisurely  debates  of  philoso- 
phers and  finely  fashioned  statues  and  temples  were 
made  possible  only  by  the  economic  servitude  of  the 
masses.  That  this  was  so  did  not  then  disturb  the 
thinker  and  artist.  The  men  of  gold  were  divinely 
constituted  to  rule  the  men  of  baser  metals.  And 
all  highly  cultivated  societies  from  the  age  of  Pericles 
until  our  own  have  been  moved  little  if  at  all  by  the 
miserable  and  restricted  lives  of  those  beneath  them. 
It  is  no  longer  so.  The  temper  of  the  time,  the  widen- 
ing of  the  social  consciousness  will  not  permit  artist 
or  thinker  to  dwell  apart  oblivious  of  those  who  fur- 
nish him  with  food  and  leisure.  Too  many  poems 
like  The  Song  of  the  Shirt  and  The  Cry  of  the  Chil- 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY         129 

dren  have  been  written  to  enable  him  to  forget  the 
sweatshop  and  the  cottonmill.  The  literature,  art, 
and  philosophy  of  his  time  are  saturated  with  allu- 
sions to  social  problems.  If  he  lives  a  life  of  self- 
gratification,  however  lofty,  he  is  forever  haunted  by 
the  shadow  of  those  without  his  cloistered  peace, 
those  who  lack  what  is  his.  And  so  he  can  never 
find  happiness  or  serenity  in  a  world  such  as  ours. 
Nor  will  sensitive  men  ever  find  happiness  and  seren- 
ity until  our  world  is  altered.  Christianity,  or  what- 
ever the  moving  force  may  be,  has  made  us  aware 
of  our  kinship  with  all  men,  and  our  landless  cousins 
who  sit  at  our  gates  can  never  be  banished  from  our 
thoughts,  try  as  we  may  to  exorcise  them. 

That  this  is  so  is  evident  even  in  slight  contacts 
with  stupid  wealthy  people;  much  more  with  those  of 
finer  grain.  One  hears  the  casual  well-to-do  tourist 
and  pleasure  seeker  or  the  snobbish  social  climber 
forever  protesting  against  reformers,  trade  unions, 
labour  leaders,  socialists,  radical  writers  and  leaders 
— he  calls  them  demagogues  and  agitators.  He  will 
introduce  the  topic  when  you  least  desire  it  and  bore 
you  with  his  primitive  views.  And  he  does  it,  I  think, 
not  because  he  is  haunted  by  a  fear  of  dispossession 
or  anticipates  that  he  will  be  held  accountable  as  an 
unfit  steward  of  his  goods,  but  because  of  some 
obscure  prick  of  conscience  which  irritates  and  tor- 
ments him  he  knows  not  clearly  why.  He  does  not 


130   THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

know  how  to  do  other  than  he  does,  but  the  impulse  to 
make  some  surrender  is  there.  He  is  in  the  state  of 
mind  of  the  blackguard  and  wife-beater  whom  Shaw 
depicts  in  Major  Barbara,  loathing  his  way  of  life 
and  hating  those  who  would  convert  him.  Only  a 
very  thick-skinned  person  can  be  insensitive  to  this 
spirit  of  our  time,  while  those  of  fine  feeling  must  al- 
ways be  unhappy  even  in  the  pursuit  of  the  finest 
things  in  life  so  long  as  the  freedom  they  enjoy  is  not 
a  freedom  shared  equally  by  all. 

Perhaps  it  is  because  of  this  conviction  of  sin  that 
the  wealthy  classes  of  our  day  produce  nothing  of 
worth  in  art,  or  thought,  or  literature.  Yet  less  have 
they  achieved  that  noble  manner  of  life,  in  itself  the 
finest  of  arts,  which  redeemed  somewhat  the  aristoc- 
racies of  other  ages.  No  aristocracy  will  ever  again 
attain  noble  living,  for  noble  spirits  no  longer  be- 
lieve in  aristocracy.  They  devote  their  lives  to  the 
effort  which  has  seemed  so  long  hopeless  of  bringing 
light  to  the  dark  places  and  giving  to  all  men  those 
opportunities  of  life  which  in  a  happier  world  they 
would  themselves  seek  to  enjoy.  This  is  an  added 
reason,  perhaps  the  greatest,  why  at  this  crisis  in  the 
world's  history,  the  best  thought  and  feeling  of  the 
age  may  if  rightly  guided,  be  turned  to  the  destruc- 
tion of  our  social  evils.  Men  are  not  lacking  now 
who  realize  that  only  as  all  men  find  freedom  and 
opportunity  for  happiness  is  true  freedom  and  hap- 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY        131 

piness  possible  to  any  one.     The  social  consciousness 
of  our  age  will  not  permit  us  to  feel  otherwise. 

§2 

The  sensitiveness  of  the  modern  soul  to  the  woes  of 
white  men  and  black  whether  in  the  slums  of  London 
and  New  York  or  in  the  rubber  forests  of  the  Congo 
is  an  acknowledgment  of  human  kinship  the  world 
over.  It  does  not  necessarily  imply  the  recognition 
of  the  political  and  economic  equality  of  all  men — 
for  this  is  an  intellectual  rather  than  an  emotional 
conception.  But  it  is  a  recognition  of  their  spiritual 
equality,  their  equal,  because  infinite,  value  to  the 
World  Spirit.  It  is  a  curious  thing,  this  recognition 
of  spiritual  kinship.  Those  who  feel  it  most  keenly 
are  often  not  religious  people,  are  indeed  unbelievers 
in  the  conventional  sense  that  they  are  members  of 
no  church  and  have  no  interest  in  dogma.  Yet  were 
this  emotion  to  be  rationalized  and  explained  in  theo- 
logical or  metaphysical  terms  we  should  premise  as  a 
unifying  whole  in  which  all  men  have  a  part  a  World 
Spirit  for  whom  we  have  no  intelligible  name  but 
God. 

A  God  who  sums  up  in  himself  all  the  lesser 
souls  of  men,  whom  we  know  best  as  we  respond  with 
sympathy  to  the  sorrows  and  joys  of  humanity,  is  a 
God  different  from  the  God  of  history  and  theological 
dispute.  He  is  closer  to  us,  for  we  feel  him  in  our 


132   THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

hearts;  we  do  not  fear  him  in  the  anathemas  of 
priests.  He  is  not  the  lawgiver  and  judge,  formid- 
able and  remote,  of  Hebrew  tradition.  He  is  some- 
thing more  intimate  even  than  a  spiritual  father  com- 
passionating and  suffering  for  the  sins  and  errors  of 
his  children.  He  has  a  part  in  us  and  we  are  a  part 
of  him.  We  must  feel  that  our  hopes  are  his  also, 
our  failures  his.  We  must  feel  that  our  desire  for  a 
better  world,  a  kingdom  of  heaven  upon  earth,  is  his 
dream  also.  And  we  must  feel  with  a  profound  con- 
viction the  necessity  of  aiding  God  to  attain  his  vision, 
believing  that  he  works  only  through  us  and  is  de- 
pendent upon  our  co-operation  with  his  purposes. 

God,  so  conceived,  is  no  vague  first  cause,  no  mere 
name  for  necessity.  He  is  not  omnipotent.  He  is 
the  sum  of  life,  and  the  modern  man  conceives  of  the 
life  force  as  a  persistent,  patient,  but  finite  and  re- 
stricted power  seeking  to  express  itself  in  finer  and 
more  varied  forms  of  life  that  overcome  the  restric- 
tions of  matter  and  necessity  in  an  ever  urgent  aspi- 
ration for  greater  freedom;  which  learns  by  experi- 
ence, and  despite  setbacks  struggles  upward  towards 
some  goal  never  wholly  achieved  because  always  re- 
formulated in  finer  terms  as  lesser  goals  are  attained 
and  passed. 

Such  a  God  is  not  omnipotent  but  must  war  upon 
recalcitrant  matter  and  bend  it  to  his  purposes.  He 
is  not  free  but  attains  ever  greater  freedom  through 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY        133 

effort  and  travail.  We  must  think  of  him  as  a  per- 
sonality like  ourselves,  suffering  with  us  and  learning 
from  our  experience  but  with  a  finer  and  more  ample 
vision  than  we  individually  possess.  We  can  feel  our- 
selves grow  closer  to  him  in  prayer  and  in  compliance 
with  our  sense  of  duty.  We  can  renew  our  strength 
as  we  feel  confidence  in  his  enduring  purpose.  We 
can  feel  a  sense  of  fellowship  with  him  as  we  learn  to 
love  our  fellowmen,  and  a  growth  in  freedom  as  we 
struggle  to  attain  it.  Our  hell  is  our  failure  to  at- 
tempt the  realization  of  our  best  possibilities;  our 
heaven  only  a  sense  of  growth  and  progress  and 
closer  affiliation  with  God  in  his  attainment  of  his 
ends. 

A  God  who  is  not  omnipotent  nor  inscrutable  but 
who  realizes  his  aspirations  only  imperfectly  and 
slowly,  like  ourselves,  is  a  necessity  to  the  modern 
man,  never  more  so  than  today  when  to  conceive  of 
God  as  voluntarily  decreeing  the  horrors  of  the  pres- 
ent war  would  be  to  alienate  him  altogether  from  the 
possibility  of  human  love  and  trust.  A  God  who 
could  so  decree  would  be  no  other  than  a  devil  to  us, 
try  as  theologians  might  to  exonerate  him  on  the  plea 
of  inscrutable  purposes  and  man's  restricted  vision. 
It  is  a  God  intelligible  to  man  that  is  our  present 
necessity  and  such  a  God  must  be  fallible  though 
aspiring,  of  limited  powers  but  persistent  and  patient, 
working  through  us  but  also  dependent  upon  us. 


134      THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

To  the  sceptical  modern  world  Christ  is  wholly 
intelligible  only  as  a  man  of  great  spiritual  insight, 
great  sympathy  with  suffering,  a  seer  who  held  the 
vision  of  a  regenerated  world,  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
upon  earth.  When  Christ  is  thought  of  as  divine  his 
teaching  and  his  suffering  mean  nothing  to  us.  If 
Christ  is  thought  of  as  a  man  they  become  real  and 
show  the  possibilities  of  human  sympathy  and  sacri- 
fice. Christ  was  a  reformer  consumed  with  a  passion 
to  relieve  the  misery  of  the  world  and  to  set  men  upon 
the  path  of  righteousness  and  freedom.  He  wished 
to  found  a  new  social  order  based  upon  equality  and 
justice.  Two  thousand  years  after  his  execution  the 
world  is  realizing  the  simple  and  practical  truth  of 
his  teachings. 

This  recognition  of  a  more  human  Christ 
comes  from  those  outside  the  churches,  the  un- 
orthodox— though  the  spread  of  this  conception  has 
of  late  altered  somewhat  the  conventional  teachings 
of  orthodoxy.  Institutional  religion  is,  however,  no- 
toriously hostile  to  innovation  and  jealous  of  its 
authority.  Though  it  has  played  a  notable  part  in 
political  history  by  reason  of  its  wealth  and  temporal 
power,  it  has  never  espoused  the  theory  that  its  func- 
tions were  primarily  earthly  and  human  rather  than 
other  worldly  and  spiritual.  It  has  utilized  social 
institutions  for  its  own  ends  but  has  never  consid- 
ered it  the  function  of  the  church  to  alter  social  and 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY        135 

political  institutions  to  keep  pace  with  an  advancing 
morality.  Its  moral  teaching  has,  in  short,  been 
personal  rather  than  social.  Seldom  has  it  been  an 
instrument  of  reform.  When  not  ostensibly  assuming 
a  neutral  position  it  has  actively  opposed  progressive 
movements,  both  political  and  economic. 

Thus  it  is  that  radicals,  idealists,  and  men  of  pro- 
gressive spirit  are  to  be  found  mostly  without  the 
pale  of  the  church  and  have  come  to  regard  the  church 
as  an  institution  surviving  from  another  day,  one 
which  must  be  torn  down  before  the  world  can  be 
reorganized  upon  better  and  freer  lines.  This  is  un- 
fortunate, for  the  world  has  need  today  of  spiritual 
guidance  and  a  haven  of  consolation  and  strength. 
But  what  consolation  can  the  church  as  we  know  it 
offer  to  men?  It  tells  them  to  turn  their  thoughts 
upon  another  world.  It  offers  a  God  omnipotent  and 
just  who  can  yet  approve,  because  he  ordains,  life  as 
men  know  it.  Men  ask  a  God  as  sensitive,  as  kindly, 
and  as  just  as  themselves.  Him  they  find  in  their 
hearts,  if  at  all,  and  whatever  formal  deference  they 
may  pay  to  creed  and  ritual  is  due  to  habit  rather 
than  to  any  expectation  of  spiritual  profit. 

The  Church  fails  because  it  lags  behind  rather  than 
leads  the  moral  development  of  society.  Its  moral- 
ity is  that  of  a  primitive  people,  not  of  a  complicated 
industrial  society.  The  ten  commandments  are  no 
more  an  adequate  guide  to  social  conduct  than  would 


136      THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

the  Code  of  Hammurabi  suffice  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States  in  passing  judgment  upon  a  con- 
spiracy in  restraint  of  trade.  The  man  of  today 
wishes  light  upon  child  labour,  socialism,  birth  con- 
trol, woman's  suffrage — a  host  of  pressing  issues, 
political  to  be  sure  but  also  moral,  for  they  must  be 
decided  not  upon  the  ground  of  expediency  only  but 
upon  that  of  right  and  justice.  "Thou  shall  not  covet 
anything  that  is  thy  neighbour's"  can  be  made  to 
mean  that  a  man  should  be  content  with  an  insufficient 
wage  and  be  satisfied  in  that  position  in  life  to  which 
God  has  called  him.  It  is  difficult  to  extract  any 
wider  implication  from  it  if  one's  moral  aim  is  social 
rather  than  narrowly  personal. 

Whether  consciously  or  no,  organized  religion  has 
for  the  most  part  aligned  itself  with  the  powers  of 
this  world  rather  than  with  the  spiritual  forces  of  the 
invisible  world.  It  is  opposed  to  radicalism  in  all 
its  forms  as  expressive  of  spiritual  aspirations  foreign 
to  the  churchly  tradition.  Of  the  rich  it  asks  finan- 
cial support  and  a  conventional  family  morality. 
But  upon  the  more  difficult  question  of  the  obligation 
of  wealth  to  the  state  or  the  yet  more  difficult  justifica- 
tion of  wealth  in  private  hands  it  casts  no  light.  It 
has  failed  to  see  that  human  morality  is  a  growth,  that 
it  must  alter  with  a  changing  world.  The  moral  codes 
that  were  adequate  to  a  primitive  people  or  to  the 
feudal  age  are  no  longer  sufficient. 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY        137 

These  are  obvious  truths  and  are  perceived  as  such 
by  many  communicants  and  even  by  an  appreciable 
number  of  ministers  and  priests,  too  few,  however,  to 
determine  the  character  of  the  church  as  an  institu- 
tion. Its  spiritual  power  today  is  warped  by  its  tradi- 
tions, by  its  dependence  upon  the  financial  support  of 
the  rich,  by  the  respectable  character  of  its  congre- 
gations, and  most  of  all  perhaps,  by  its  racial  and  na- 
tional limitations.  Greek,  Roman,  Lutheran,  and 
English  churches  do  not  unite  to  teach  the  brother- 
hood of  man  and  the  spiritual  kinship  of  Prussian, 
Slav,  Frenchman,  and  Jew.  The  clergy  of  Germany 
pray  for  the  destruction  of  the  enemy  and  the  triumph 
of  German  arms.  And  the  clergy  of  America  pray 
for  the  overthrow  of  Germany.  Like  the  tariff,  God 
is  a  "local  issue." 

To  idealists  little  concerned  with  the  Church's  ulti- 
mate failure  or  success,  because  convinced  that  finer 
ideals  will  one  day  rule  the  world  whether  or  no  the 
church  accepts  or  rejects  them,  it  is  nevertheless  dis- 
appointing that  the  church  at  such  a  time  as  now 
shows  so  little  aptitude  for  leadership.  The  majority 
of  the  citizens  in  the  warring  nations  are  members 
of  some  church.  They  are  conventional  "average" 
people,  respecting  the  great  tradition  of  the  church 
and  looking  a  bit  wistfully  to  priest  and  minister  for 
spiritual  guidance.  They  wish  to  see  the  way  to 
peace  upon  earth  and  good  will  toward  mea  And 


138      THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

the  church,  if  it  had  but  the  vision  to  reply  to  this 
need  in  honest  terms  freed  of  all  pietistic  phrasing, 
could  do  inexpressibly  much  at  such  a  time  of  moral 
questioning  as  this  to  turn  men's  thoughts  to  brother- 
hood and  love  rather  than  to  hate;  to  a  constructive 
hope  rather  than  to  hateful  memories  and  despair. 
If  the  church  is  ever  again  to  be  a  moral  guide  to 
progress,  not  a  check  upon  it,  it  can  ask  no  greater 
opportunity  than  that  of  today  in  which  to  show  its 
possibilities  for  leadership. 

Consider  first  the  international  changes  which  the 
church  must  anticipate  and  welcome  if  it  is  to  be- 
come something  more  than  a  parochial  institution. 
The  Christian  world  is  divided  into  a  considerable 
number  of  churches,  some  with  communicants  all  over 
the  world,  others  coterminous  with  single  states,  and 
many — offshoots  of  the  larger  parent  church — of  rel- 
atively small  size  and  restricted  influence.  Yet  all 
profess  the  same  source  of  inspiration:  the  life  of 
Christ  as  narrated  in  the  New  Testament.  All  be- 
lieve in  a  God,  however  variously  defined  and  with 
what  not  mystical  attributes  and  powers.  All  pro- 
fess, too,  to  bring  men  nearer  to  God  and  to  enable 
them  to  lead  better  lives.  With  this  much  in  common 
there  seems  no  sane  reason  for  their  hostility  one  to 
another.  What  sensible  modern  person  is  concerned 
with  the  nature  of  the  baptismal  ceremony  or  in- 
deed whether  or  no  such  a  ceremony  exist.  It  is 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY        139 

ritualistic  merely.  In  itself  it  has  no  spiritual  value, 
is  at  most  a  symbol,  significant  to  some,  meaningless 
to  others.  And  so  with  all  the  multitudinous  differ- 
ences in  creed,  ritual,  dress,  and  what  not.  These 
are  harmless  enough  save  as  they  serve  like  differ- 
ences in  speech,  dress,  manners,  and  customs  among 
nations  to  divide  men  and  to  perpetuate  their  ancient 
jealousies  and  antagonisms.  The  church,  which  has 
taught  the  fatherhood  of  God  and,  by  implication,  the 
brotherhood  of  man  must  needs  keep  pace  with  the 
modern  world  which  desires  greater  political  unity. 
The  church  should  anticipate  this  union  by  a  closer 
religious  organization  of  the  Christian  nations,  a  pre- 
liminary to  the  religious  union  of  all  nations,  Chris- 
tian and  non-Christian. 

There  have  been  tentative  movements  towards  such 
a  union  among  churches  of  not  too  divergent  a  ritual 
and  system  of  control,  but  a  complete  and  effective 
union  in  which  all  shall  lay  aside  much  that  is  pecul- 
iar and  individual  for  the  more  effective  emphasis 
upon  what  is  truly  essential  and  common  to  all  seems 
now  less  imminent  than  the  political  federation  of 
nations.  For  churches  share  not  only  racial  and  na- 
tional animosities  and  jealousies  but  add  thereto  the 
extreme  conservatism  of  wealth  and  tradition;  and 
each  is  convinced  that  only  through  adherence  to  its 
particular  formulae  are  salvation  and  righteousness  to 
be  achieved.  Perhaps  some  great  revival  of  religious 


140   THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

feeling  such  as  animated  Christendom  at  the  time  of 
the  first  crusade  may  sweep  away  all  the  old  meaning- 
less barriers.  But  such  a  revival  is  unpredictable. 
The  war  might  possibly  generate  it.  But  it  remains  a 
hope,  only,  not  a  likelihood. 

Great  as  are  the  obstacles  to  the  world  union  of  the 
Christian  churches,  yet  more  difficult  will  be  the  fed- 
eration of  religions  the  world  over  and  the  recogni- 
tion of  their  equality  in  the  eyes  of  that  God  whom 
all  alike  seek  to  know.  This  acknowledgment  would 
be  but  another  extension  of  the  democratic  principle 
whose  realization  we  seek.  It  would  not  mean  neces- 
sarily that  Christianity  was  ethically  no  higher  than 
Mohammedanism,  nor  Confucianism  than  Buddhism. 
It  would  mean  merely  this,  that  the  adherents  of  all 
religions  should  be  equally  free  to  worship  as  they 
chose  and  be  subject  to  no  political  or  other  pressure 
to  change  their  way  of  thinking.  The  higher  religion 
will  displace  the  lower  only  as  it  is  needed  and  sought. 
Conversion  of  savage  peoples  to  Christianity  is 
usually  meaningless,  for  only  in  exceptional  instances 
does  the  savage  convert  understand  the  meaning  of  the 
religion  he  professes.  Much  better  would  be  his 
adoption  of  some  religion  only  a  bit  in  advance  of  that 
to  which  he  was  born,  one  not  too  opposed  to  the 
habits  and  customs  he  has  always  known.  So  it  is 
recognized  in  many  quarters  that  Mohammedanism 
is  a  better  means  of  raising  the  African  savage  in  the 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY         141 

scale  of  civilization  than  is  Christianity.  Likewise 
the  practice  of  the  wisest  missionaries  in  training  the 
native  peoples  to  the  best  in  their  primitive  religions 
before  seeking  to  convert  them  to  Christianity,  is  evi- 
dence of  the  growing  charity  and  wisdom  of  the 
world — or  of  a  small  corner  of  it. 

If  the  world  is  to  know  a  better  relationship  among 
the  nations,  and  if  all  are  to  be  masters  of  their 
destiny,  free  to  grow  as  they  will  so  long  as  they 
do  not  encroach  upon  others,  the  Christian  churches 
must  renounce  all  effort  to  proselytize  when  their 
presence  among  alien  peoples  is  not  requested.  If 
Christianity  is  truly  the  superior  to  all  other  beliefs, 
let  the  lives  of  Christians  demonstrate  as  much. 
Hindoo,  Chinaman,  and  Jap  will  seek  Christianity  of 
themselves  when  the  white  race  has  aroused  their 
reverence  and  admiration.  Then  we  shall  have  no 
need  of  missionaries,  nor  the  backing  of  battleships 
and  punitive  expeditions.  Christianity  will  spread 
by  reason  of  its  own  inherent  worth.  Conversion  by 
the  sword  is  an  aid  to  economic  conquest  but  not  to 
spiritual  enlightenment. 

These  are  radical  concessions  for  the  Christian 
churches  to  make  if  they  are  to  become  leaders  in  the 
democratization  of  the  world.  Greater  yet  must  be 
their  regeneration  if  they  are  to  assume  constructive 
leadership  in  the  social  morality  of  our  day.  Where 
before  the  church  has  taught  a  personal  and  tradi- 


142      THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

tional  morality  and  has  been  hostile  to  innovation  it 
will  need  to  be  revolutionary  in  its  social  teachings, 
affirming  religion,  politics,  and  economics  to  be  in- 
separable, to  be  in  fact  but  different  ways  of  regarding 
man  in  his  relations  with  his  fellows. 

In  some  of  the  Protestant  churches  clergymen  have 
felt  it  their  duty  to  preach  upon  civic  affairs,  have 
taken  a  hand  in  politics  and  been  leaders  in  move- 
ments for  "reform."  But  for  the  most  part,  clergy- 
men and  the  church  vote,  the  "good  people,"  are  easily 
hoodwinked  by  the  professional  politician.  The 
reason  is  simple  enough:  their  moral  code  is  too 
primitive  to  be  adequate  to  the  complexity  of  modern 
conditions.  The  "respectable"  candidate  whose 
family  life  is  stainless  and  who  is  a  declared  foe  of 
the  saloon  will  win  their  votes  even  though  he  is  hand 
in  glove  with  public  utility  corporations  and  the  "big 
interests."  The  candidate  who  declares  for  a  "closed 
town"  may  wink  at  franchise  grabs  and  be  a  friend 
to  graft.  A  morality  so  simple  that  it  thinks  the 
saloon  the  root  of  all  evil  and  a  conventional  sex 
morality  the  chief  virtue  in  a  candidate  for  office  is  of 
little  practical  value  to  the  cause  of  righteousness  in 
our  political  life. 

This  reliance  upon  a  primitive  moral  code  and 
naive  faith  in  the  promises  of  politicians  are  inexcus- 
able today,  for  any  one  who  can  read  can  learn  the 
patent  fact  that  our  politics  are  corrupt  for  the  reason 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY        143 

that  our  political  machinery,  subject  to  the  pressure  of 
private  interests,  ceases  to  do  the  work  for  which  it 
was  designed:  to  fulfil  the  wishes  of  the  people.  And 
from  this  failure  springs  a  multitude  of  evils — in- 
equitable taxation,  poor  housing  inspection,  defective 
health  measures,  poor  transit  service — inefficiency  and 
waste  on  every  hand,  the  price  a  community  pays  for 
surrendering  its  liberties  to  a  political  machine  and 
those  who  profit  therefrom.  Though  all  this  is  obvi- 
ous enough,  is  written  in  the  history  of  any  political 
campaign  in  our  larger  cities,  the  respectable  people 
do  not  seem  to  learn.  Yet  out  of  this  corruption  and 
perversion  of  democracy  spring  the  veritable  carnal 
sins  which  churches  seem  to  regard  as  their  chief 
enemy.  A  simple  illustration  will  serve. 

In  the  psychopathic  laboratory  of  the  Juvenile  De- 
tention Home  in  Chicago,  delinquent  girls  are  ex- 
amined and  committed  to  various  reformatory  insti- 
tutions. Many  of  the  girls  when  released  are  re- 
formed, truly  desirous,  if  permitted,  of  leading  re- 
spectable lives.  Yet  the  attendants  at  the  home 
declared  recently  that  their  work  was  largely  useless 
for  the  reason  that  the  girls  were  enticed  into  their 
old  ways  by  keepers  of  brothels.  Appeals  to  the 
police  to  suppress  the  brothels  were  of  no  avail,  for 
the  "business  administration,"  the  "reform  mayor," 
ostensibly  the  foe  to  the  saloon,  permitted  a  wide- 
open  town.  This  mayor  had  been  supported  in  his 


144      THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

candidacy  by  hundreds  of  clergymen  because,  for- 
sooth, he  had  declared  that  it  would  be  his  first  act 
as  mayor  to  enforce  the  Sunday  closing  law.  This 
conventional  bait  had  won  him  thousands  of  respect- 
able but  unintelligent  votes. 

The  instance  demonstrates  merely  that  people  to 
whom  Sunday  observance  is  a  prime  political  and 
moral  issue  are  easy  game  for  the  politician.  But  it 
is  an  ominous  instance,  for  ministers  and  church  peo- 
ple must  show  far  better  moral  judgment  than  this  if 
they  are  to  do  their  part  in  achieving  a  genuine  democ- 
racy. The  sin  which  churches  seek  to  overcome  is 
most  of  it  not  born  of  innate  depravity,  "original 
sin,"  but  of  social  conditions.  It  is  due  to  bad 
housing,  insufficient  food,  a  corrupt  environment,  bad 
home  training  by  overworked  and  underpaid  parents, 
deficient  education,  child  labour,  too  little  opportu- 
nity for  wholesome  recreation — innumerable  evils 
which  prey  on  body  and  soul  and  lead  girls  into 
vice  and  boys  into  crime.  If  the  churches  honestly 
pursue  sin — such  obvious  sin  as  theft,  murder,  and 
prostitution — to  its  source  and  seek  to  eradicate  it 
there,  they  will  be  forced  at  once  into  "practical 
politics."  If  they  mean  by  the  phrases  "brothers  in 
Christ"  or  "children  of  God"  more  than  communi- 
cants of  a  particular  faith  they  will  be  led,  in  their 
effort  to  attain  a  true  brotherhood  of  man,  to  trans- 
form our  industrial  society.  They  will  seek  as  their 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY         145 

object  a  greater  equalization  of  property  than  exists 
at  present,  a  high  minimum  wage,  strict  housing  laws, 
and  democratic  control  of  the  means  of  production — 
all  those  immediate  and  pressing  needs  which  are  the 
commonplaces  of  social  reform.  Sin,  like  disease, 
is  largely  a  social  product.  Churches  which  war  in- 
telligently upon  sin  must  lead  in  the  revolution  of  a 
society  which  produces  sin. 

Furthermore  the  church  must  face  honestly  a  new 
morality  of  the  family  and  childbearing.  The  grave- 
yards of  New  England  are  filled  with  the  bodies  of 
young  mothers  who  died  in  childbirth,  the  third  and 
fourth  wives,  often  enough,  of  God-fearing  Puritans. 
The  church  has  preached  from  the  text  "increase  and 
multiply."  With  Luther  it  has  taught  that  women 
dying  in  childbirth  were  blessed  in  the  fulfilment  of 
a  godly  duty.  It  has  urged  the  duty  of  having  large 
families.  What  the  lives  of  women  have  been  under 
such  instruction  only  doctors  can  tell.  Twenty  thou- 
sand women  die  yearly  in  the  United  States  during 
childbirth,  and  the  invalidism,  insanity,  and  stunted 
lives  which  are  another  consequence  of  untimely 
motherhood  are  beyond  computation.  Much  of  this 
tragedy  is  unnecessary;  yet  only  a  few  reformers — 
jailed  for  the  dissemination  of  "immoral  literature" 
— and  a  few  scientists  and  leading  doctors  have  thus 
far  had  the  courage  and  public  spirit  to  advocate  the 
practise  of  birth  control. 


146      THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

Yet  everyone  knows  that  birth  control  is  widely 
practised  by  the  better  informed  classes  and  that  the 
result  of  this  practise  is  not  immorality  but  smaller 
families,  more  carefully  nurtured,  and  mothers  more 
physically  fit  and  freed  from  the  constant  dread  of 
inopportune  pregnancy.  Unless  men  are  to  continue 
to  breed  and  perish  like  the  brutes  and  unless  over- 
crowded populations  are  to  seek  new  lands  by  war  and 
conquest  or  be  periodically  reduced  by  the  plague, 
the  practise  of  birth  control  must  be  universal  in 
crowded  and  civilized  states.  Practised  by  moral 
people  birth  control  is  a  moral  act.  But  will  the 
churches  be  among  the  first  to  spread  this  morality? 
Will  clergymen  give  the  weight  of  their  influence  to 
this  vital  reform?  I  have  yet  to  hear  of  one  such. 
Doubtless  he  would  be  harried  from  his  charge.  And 
yet  if  clergymen  are  to  be  moral  leaders  they  must 
be  prepared  to  be  martyrs. 

§3 

The  object  of  this  brief  discussion  of  the  church  in 
its  relation  to  politics  and  an  evolving  morality  has 
been  to  point  out  briefly  the  relation  of  morals  to  eco- 
nomic problems  within  the  state  and  to  the  larger  issue 
of  democracy  in  international  relations.  It  will  be 
unfortunate  if  all  the  leaders  of  thought  are  to  be 
other  than  church  members,  for  the  churches  by  rea- 
son of  their  organization  and  their  traditional  hold 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY        147 

upon  mankind  could,  under  enlightened  leadership, 
vastly  accelerate  our  social  and  moral  progress.  We 
may  hope  that  a  wave  of  religious  feeling,  the  product 
of  this  war  with  its  suffering  and  its  spiritual  lessons, 
may  revivify  the  church  and  restore  it  to  its  proper 
place  as  a  guiding  moral  force  in  the  regeneration 
of  society.  But  it  is  at  best  only  a  hope,  not  an  ex- 
pectation. 

It  is  to  a  newer  conception  of  God,  one  more  in 
accord  with  modern  science  and  philosophy  than  the 
traditional  God  of  theology,  that  we  turn  most  hope- 
fully after  speculating  upon  the  ills  of  society  and 
the  means  to  their  elimination.  Only  as  we  con- 
ceive of  God  not  as  a  static  first  cause  of  a  universe 
fated  to  grow  upon  predetermined  lines,  but  as  a  crea- 
tive spiritual  force  struggling  to  achieve  a  finer  world, 
does  human  effort  seem  significant,  worthy,  and  hope- 
ful amid  a  hostile  universe.  Only  then  do  we  find 
consolation  in  man's  conquests  of  nature  and  read  in 
his  faltering  progress  the  augury  of  a  happier  future. 
Under  such  a  God  we  are  all  brothers  in  imperfection 
but  brothers  too  in  the  attainment  of  an  incalculable 
perfection,  whatever  we  have  the  courage  and  will  to 
aspire  to.  It  is  not  a  predestined  future.  We  make 
it  for  ourselves  and  our  children,  and  the  conscious- 
ness of  our  freedom  is  the  first  step  to  its  attainment. 

With  this  consciousness  comes  the  immediate  real- 
ization that  only  as  purpose  is  unified  and  men  domi- 


148      THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

nated  by  like  ideals  is  rational  and  swift  development 
possible.  Amid  the  clash  of  individual  ambitions 
and  international  hatreds  and  rivalries  the  perfected 
state  in  which  man's  conquest  of  nature  is  made  the 
secure  basis  for  the  equal  welfare  of  all  has  but  a  faint 
prospect  of  realization.  Those  things  which  divide 
men — rivalry,  greed,  faith  in  national  destiny,  the 
desire  for  power,  pride  in  caste  and  creed,  trade  bar- 
riers— all  these  must  no  longer  be  justified  by  our 
moral  code  if  men  are  to  work  together  to  achieve 
a  better  and  freer  world.  Such  an  enlargement 
of  our  morality  war  both  facilitates  and  retards.  Our 
alliance  wtih  England,  France  and  Russia  has  minim- 
ized many  ancient  antipathies.  But  it  has  created 
hatred  of  Germany  and  Austria.  If,  at  the  peace, 
we  do  not  attempt  to  deal  justly  with  our  foes,  dis- 
criminating between  them  as  men  like  ourselves  and 
the  autocracy  which  they  have  permitted  and  which 
we  feel  endangers  the  peace  of  the  world,  the  war 
will  have  been  productive  of  evil.  Perhaps  no  good 
can  fully  compensate  the  cost  in  any  case.  We  can 
only  do  our  best  to  pluck  something  of  value  from 
the  wreck  of  so  much  that  was  good — from  the  lives 
of  men  and  the  work  of  their  hands. 

Essential  to  this  effort  to  turn  great  evil  to  partial 
good  is  the  recognition  of  our  failure  to  achieve 
democracy  and  freedom  and  a  resolution  to  do  better. 
If  we  triumph  in  the  war  and  emerge  complacent  and 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  MORALITY        149 

self-righteous,  achieving  meanwhile  a  political  and 
economic  administration  whose  possibilities  of  evil 
and  enslavement  are  as  great  as  its  possibilities  of 
freedom,  then  we  shall  learn  to  our  cost  that  the 
liberty  for  which  we  have  fought  and  suffered  is  a 
mirage.  New  wars  for  liberty  will  need  to  be  fought 
and  the  lesson  which  this  war  should  teach  us  will 
need  to  be  relearned  and  at  great  cost.  An  enlight- 
ened morality  is  the  first  essential,  one  that  transcends 
class,  creed,  racial  distrust,  and  a  narrow  patriotism. 
The  new  morality  demands  that  the  conduct  of  the  in- 
dividual and  the  group  shall  be  governed  by  the  desire 
so  to  act  that  the  welfare  of  men  the  world  over  shall 
be  enlarged  thereby;  not  the  welfare  only  of  oneself, 
one's  caste,  or  one's  country,  but  the  welfare  of  all 
men. 


SOME    PRACTICAL   CONSIDERATIONS 

IT  has  been  the  purpose  of  this  book  to  make  clear 
the  need  of  domestic  reforms  if  a  world  organiza- 
tion for  the  maintenance  of  peace  is  to  persist.  The 
democratization  of  the  world  demands  that  the  various 
civilized  peoples  enlarge  their  conceptions  of  democ- 
racy and  strive,  by  means  of  domestic  institutions 
more  subject  than  now  to  popular  control  and  more 
expressive  of  popular  aims,  to  attain  such.  The 
peace  itself  and  its  immediate  terms  must  necessarily 
be  something  of  a  compromise.  It  can  hardly  realize 
completely  the  most  liberal  thought  and  aspiration  of 
our  day.  At  best  it  will  be  but  a  tentative  essay,  its 
terms  serving  as  a  basis  for  a  firmer  international 
organization  than  heretofore,  one  sufficing  until  the 
various  contracting  nations  shall  have  achieved  a 
truer  democracy  than  now,  and  until  the  checks  im- 
posed upon  the  spirit  of  autocracy  and  militarism 
shall  have  demonstrated  their  fitness  or  unfitness  to 
their  end  and  their  need  of  revision  and  supplement. 
The  conclusion  of  a  peace  will  not,  in  a  very  real 
sense,  end  the  war,  for  the  war  has  passed  far  beyond 
its  original  aims.  It  is  no  longer  merely  a  contest 

150 


SOME  PRACTICAL  CONSIDERATIONS     151 

between  nations  but  a  conflict  between  opposed  ideals. 
It  is  the  first  and  most  violent  stage  of  a  revolution,  of 
a  battle  between  autocracy  and  democracy,  of  free- 
dom and  capitalism,  of  men  and  things.  How  long 
such  a  contest  may  persist  no  one  dare  prophesy.  Its 
more  violent  manifestations  may  easily  continue  be- 
yond our  day,  and  something  resembling  the  realiza- 
tion of  our  best  ideals  of  social  and  political  institu- 
tions may  not  be  achieved  in  two  generations.  Free- 
dom is  not  won  at  a  blow  nor  perfection  achieved  by 
an  act  of  will. 

We  face  an  uncertain  era,  one  of  which  we  may  say 
ultimately,  "Joy  was  it  then  to  be  alive";  for  none 
of  us  is  so  obscure  or  so  devoid  of  influence  that  he 
may  not  do  his  part  in  preparing  the  way  for  better 
things,  for  a  finer  order  of  life  than  is  now  possible 
in  our  money-making  age  with  its  selfish  and  material 
ambitions.  We  look  forward  to  a  time  when  partici- 
pation in  the  comforts  and  leisure  of  life  shall  not 
be  the  privilege  of  a  few  but  the  lot  of  all;  when  the 
joy  of  genuinely  creative  work  shall  be  experienced 
by  every  one;  and  when  every  boy  and  girl  shall  be 
fitted  by  education  and  opportunity  to  the  best  ex- 
pression of  his  latent  powers.  Our  civilization  is 
wasteful  of  the  powers  of  men,  inhibiting  them  or  per- 
verting them  to  base  uses.  The  revolution  which  is 
now  gathering  power  has  as  its  simple  objective,  I 
take  it?  the  reorganization  of  society  to  the  end  that 


152      THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

men  and  women  everywhere  may  have  life  more 
abundantly;  that  they  may  live  in  communities  which 
do  not  repress  or  pervert  their  best  potentialities  but 
give  these  a  fair  field  for  growth  and  harvest. 

We  in  the  United  States  face,  I  believe,  a  more 
difficult  task  than  that  confronting  any  other  of  the 
great  nations.  We  are  largely  inchoate.  Many  of 
our  constituent  groups  lack  leadership  and  a  voice. 
We  do  not  clearly  realize  our  condition  nor  the  prob- 
lems which  confront  us.  Cherishing  in  our  innocence 
the  belief  that  we  are  a  free  and  democratic  people, 
we  are  only  now  awakening  to  the  realization  that 
our  democratic  institutions  are  not  adequate  to  their 
purposes,  for  we  do  not  govern  ourselves  so  fully  as 
we  should  and  must  if  we  are  to  attain  an  industrial 
democracy.  Wealth  has  undue  power  among  us. 
A  group  relatively  small  in  numbers  but  great  in  skill 
and  influence  constitutes  our  ruling  class.  The  means 
by  which  it  governs  I  have  discussed  in  another  chap- 
ter, and  the  program  which  we  must  follow  if  condi- 
tions are  to  be  changed  for  the  better.  But  what  are 
the  immediate  political  and  social  objects  which  we 
should  pursue? 

We  can,  I  think,  do  no  better  than  to  turn  our 
eyes  towards  England  and  take  a  leaf  from  her  ex- 
perience. England  in  her  economic  and  social  legis- 
lation has  always  anticipated  us  by  a  quarter  or  a 
half  a  century.  Observe,  notably,  her  experience 


SOME  PRACTICAL  CONSIDERATIONS     153 

with  labour-unionism,  her  factory  acts,  her  industrial 
insurance,  her  old  age  pensions.  And  at  the  present 
time  the  carefully  formulated  program  of  her  labour 
party  should  afford  us  an  object  lesson.  The  indus- 
trial evolution  of  England  has  been  more  rapid  than 
that  of  the  United  States.  But  we  can  accelerate  our 
pace  if  we  will  but  look  abroad  and  heed.  In  so 
doing  we  can  obviate  many  conflicts  and  much  suffer- 
ing which  would  otherwise  be  inevitable  in  our  indus- 
trial development. 

Class  consciousness  in  England  is  more  alive  than 
here;  the  means  to  its  political  expression  is  better 
perfected.  We  are  still  a  prey  to  the  awkward  and 
undemocratic  two  party  system  which  does  not  per- 
mit minority  groups  anything  like  a  proportional 
voice  in  our  domestic  affairs.  Our  immediate  re- 
forms, then,  such  as  are  practicable  in  the  near  fu- 
ture and  are  a  necessary  prelude  to  a  more  thorough 
reorganization  of  our  society,  I  take  to  be  these: 

1.  A  reform  of  our  electoral  machinery  which  shall 
permit  minority  representation  in  Congress. 

2.  The  consequent  abolition  of  the  two  party  sys- 
tem and  the  substitution  of  the  group  system  whereby 
labour  shall  find  a  voice  in  legislation. 

3.  The  political  union  of  agricultural  and  indus- 
trial labour  and  the  formulation  of  a  common  pro- 
gram. 

4.  The  alliance  of  the  professional  and  intellectual 


154      THE  WORLD  PEACE  AND  AFTER 

workers  with  the  manual  workers  for  the  purpose  of 
securing  greater  political  power. 

Of  these  I  regard  the  last  as  the  most  important. 
It  should  provide  the  masses  with  leaders  and  a  voice 
whereby  other  necessary  changes  may  be  realized. 
Organization,  a  program,  a  clear-eyed  class  conscious- 
ness are  our  immediate  needs  before  we  can  proceed 
intelligently  to  reconstruct  our  political  and  economic 
order. 


THE   END 


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